


























.A ^ * 0 /- ^ 

^ R >1 ^ 

'i^' *jC(\IO),''o ■’% 



ny ti 





' <!-f' ■ 

^ ' ItoL"^ ^-fi 

O c'5 O 

. w- "• 

\ ' ^ ^ "O ^ ^ , I R 

H 1 /O » 






V 

V . ^ 


1,° i><'^ ■ 







-? ■» _s~S^^ ^ 'P 0 ^ 

> _\:sl\\ll^ •/■ ^ -y. 


<y ^ 
O > 


'■%" " " ° '<•<>,%''''■ ' *'vN'’ , 



vO 


Vi 




n . I 









JEANETTE- H- 

•WALWORT 


AUTHOR OP 

THAT Girl from 



CHICAGO-NEW-YORK-&-SAN-FRANCISCO- 


1 ^ 


PUBLISHERS 




A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 










• yr' 


* ' m' 




0 

I • «.»■ 


‘: »!•: ' ^ 


• < 
ft • 







4 




I ^ 

* $ 

t 

< T 

vT-’ > • • 





I •- 





9 


♦ 

s 


, ,f -.: 









►T 



'1 ‘ 

V‘ ^ 

"ji >1*’ 



■«. ^ 

■’/ * 

• 1 

» « 

■i • 




; 4 


4 r- 


•* . 


" ' ./ 

■ *T' 


' 


L, 






♦ « . ▼ 






h. 


1 I 

•». 


1 -' 

*t 

r 


ft • 
•« 


4 

ft 




t 


« 


I 



4 


4 


4 




# 





ft 





ft 


I 

♦ 



I 


^4 


f 







• ' 

I V 


/ y 





' <. 



#4 



rc 

k -e 




» 


>; 


f J 

4 


I 

r 





i 


4 









i 



* 

ft 



* 




4 



V 


» 


% 





7 


I 



\ i 



r 


ft 


ft 


m 


ft 


ft 


N 


i 


( 


t 



• < 



t 


i 




#« 


> 


r » 

« 


V 




» 


t 


t 



s 


4 <►'■* 



k 





i 




t 




<w 


• \ 


• . •» 




* », 

/ 

.• r 







ik *-k 


V. 

? 


- <. ■• 

w;* ‘ ^ 






y 


V 


fi 





\ ^ 


$ 



A Splendid 



A NOVEL. 



“THAT GIRL FROM TEXAS,” “THE BAR SINISTER,” 
“THE NEW MAN AT ROSSMERE, ” ETC. 



CHICAGO, NEW YORK, & SAN FRANCISCO 

BELFORD, CLARKE & COMPANY, 

Publishers. 

London ; J. H. Drake, Paternoster Ro^y. 


09 




COPYRIGHT, 1889, 

By Belford, Clarke & Co. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


CHAPTER I. 

When the June meadows grow gay with buttercups, 
daisies, and sweet red clover ; when sky, earth, and 
water emerge from the thraldom of winter, pranked out 
in blues and greens so exceedingly fresh and bright that 
one naturally fails to recognize them for the same old 
garments nature has worn since the garden of Eden 
times, the average man begins to draw disparaging com- 
parisons between town and country, and would gladly 
resolve himself into a brown or yellow butterfly, with no 
more onerous duty to discharge than an occasional 
flight from the crown of a clover head to the golden 
cavern of a buttercup. 

“For present purposes, I choose to classify you with 
the average man. Slough the sculptor and come up 
and turn butterfly for a few days. Metaphorically 
speaking only, for I can’t imagine you divested of your 
excessively long legs and broad shoulders, nor yet con- 
ceive of any enjoyment for you in sucking red clover 
tops. Give me a good Havana always. Seriously, 
Lidy and I want you— need you, I might say, without 


6 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


dropping into exaggeration. We are tiring of each other 
at a fearful rate. Come and take your choice of enter- 
tainments. You can go with me and fling a line for 
black-fish ; sprawl at leisure under the laburnums on 
the fresh-clipped lawn, with only your pipe or cigar for 
company (taking your chances, of course, of ants and 
malaria), or, again, you can sit on the veranda and talk 
art with Lidy. She considers herself no end of a critic 
since her return from abroad, and imposes on me most 
outrageously with her ‘tones' and ‘ semi-tones,' and 
heaven knows what bosh besides. Come up and pro- 
tect us against each other. No excuse accepted. 

‘ ‘ Y ours, 

“ Foster." 

“That's kind of Foster. Tremendous effort too. 
He's about the laziest man I know. They are people it 
won't do to slight. Old family. Good position. No 
end of money. Entertain extensively, I hear, when 
they are in town." 

With these prefatory remarks, Mr. Randall Mac- 
kaye, sculptor, tossed the above letter into his wife’s lap, 
and leaving his seat at the breakfast-table began a zig-zag 
journey about his studio. Evidently he was suffering 
from acute mental indecision. He would let Marianne 
decide for him. He had gone to numberless dinners 
and suppers in town without her ; and had obtained a 
footing in some fine houses where her existence was 
not even suspected. But he had never deliberately gone 
off into the country to pay a visit of days and left her 
alone in the stuffy little studio which was all the home 
they had. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


7 

All the same, he should like very much to accept 
Foster’s invitation. He stopped in front of her when he 
saw that she was putting the letter neatly back in its 
envelope, to say ; 

“ Well ? 

‘ ‘ Who is Lidy } ” she asked. 

“Fosters wife, I imagine. I have never met her. 
Some of the fellows at the Academy told me he had a 
wife studying in Berlin.” 

‘ ‘ Studying what .? ” 

“ Oh, music and painting and all the rest of it. The 
story goes that she is young and handsome, but never 
had much of a show before Foster married her. If I 
find she is one of your sort. I’ll ask her to come and see 
you — that is — ” 

“You are going, then ? ” 

“ For a day or two. Don’t you think it best ? The 
Fosters are good people. Best not slight their first in- 
vitation.” 

“Best not,” she had said too, and had taken consid- 
erable interest in helping to get him off on this visit to 
the Fosters. 

“You are not to speak of me to the Fosters, Ran. 
You know our understanding. I am to remain inconnu 
until I can take my proper place among your fashion- 
able friends without putting you and myself both to the 
blush. Use these rich stepping-stones to the best of 
your ability, dear. ” 

Then she had given him a good-bye kiss, and had 
even followed him with her eyes as long as she could 
see him through the bowed shutters of the studio win- 
dow, into which came all the clamorous town noises 


8 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


and the heated outside air from which Ran was joy- 
ously escaping for a little while. 

She watched him until he was swallowed up among 
the tree-trunks and the iron benches in the public square 
on which the studio fronted, then sent her imagination 
so swiftly in advance of him that she had located him 
under his friend s laburnums, and was anxiously specu- 
lating on his chances of malaria, before he had mounted 
the steps to the Elevated station which was to be the 
first stage of his journey Fosterward. 

She stood still for awhile, gathering herself together, 
after the unusual hurry and rush of Ran’s early depart- 
ure. Somehow there always seemed a tremendous 
waste of energy incident upon Ran’s social move- 
ments, and his exodus generally left her a trifle flus- 
tered. 

The square beyond the bowed shutters was green 
with the first tender foliage of the early summer time. 
Baby perambulators, with their gay canopies of crim- 
son or blue, made bright spots of color here and there, 
where their white-capped attendants had stopped to ex- 
change greetings, or to improvise flirtations with the 
bench loafers. A weary tramp was sitting on the curb 
near the drinking fountain, eating the breakfast he had 
secured at the cost of so many steps, from a greasy news- 
paper ; a pair of English sparrows were twittering and 
hopping about his shabby feet, watching for such 
crumbs as might fall from his grimy fingers ; a brewer 
wagon, piled toppling high with empty kegs, thundered 
by, making the earth tremble. “A blot upon the land- 
scape," she called it, then fell, woman-like, to uselessly 
moralizing over the sorrow and misery that those kegs, 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


9 

when full, had been the occasion of. A wheezing 
hand-organ stopped immediately under the window, 
and began grinding out the “Red, White, and Blue.” 
She shuddered, clasped her hands to her ears, and, 
turning away from the window, found herself face to 
face with all the rude litter of a sculptor’s studio. 

“ I wonder what he means by one of my sort.” She 
started from her long reverie, and walking to the remote 
end of the studio, she lifted the shroud from an unfinished 
statue, and was soon obliviously absorbed in scanning 
it. An astute looker-on would have experienced no 
difficulty in determining that the living woman had 
furnished the model for the unfinished work of art be- 
fore which she stood, with her hands dropped listlessly 
in front of her while engaged in the critic’s task. 

Not worded criticism. There was no one present to 
be benefited or exasperated by her cool, keen strictures 
upon the statue, which already faithfully outlined her 
own delicate, clean-cut profile, doing full justice to the 
supporting column of throat and slim neck so admira- 
bly poised. Ran said she “lent herself splendidly to 
marble. ” 

“He works slowly,” she said, aloud, after a long 
while; “very slowly. He will never finish it at this 
rate. Ah, if he were only more industrious, more sys- 
tematic ! ” 

Her survey concluded, she replaced the sheet and 
turned her attention to the room, whose frightful dis- 
order had extracted one or two impatient exclamations 
from her before she had unveiled the statue. There 
was a tiger’s skin on the floor, its glaring eyes and 
vicious teeth rendered somewhat ineffective at that 


10 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


particular juncture by the enveloping folds of a bright 
scarlet jacket, which had either tumbled off a chair near 
by, or been flung on the rug when discarded by its wearer. 
There was a crimson fez on the chair cushion ; and a 
paper of spilt cigarette-tobacco littered the centre-table. 
There was a pile of rough drafts of statues scattered 
about among the books and the tobacco. Wild disorder 
everywhere ! Ran had looked back over his shoulder 
with a laugh, as he congratulated her on this ‘ ‘ rare 
chance among the rubbish. 

Her white brows contracted in a frown as she re- 
called his airy words and smile. 

“If there was a hook on every inch of the walls. Ran 
would leave me something to pick up after him. ” 

The stooping for the silken jacket, or vexation at the 
selfish careleccness of its owner, flushed her face. She 
looked much less like the statue after her ivory-smooth 
cheeks had become blood-stained. Less statuesque, 
but vastly handsomer. 

She disappeared behind a heavy portiere with the 
jacket and a pair of embroidered slippers, which came 
to light on smoothing out the afghan on the sofa. The 
portieres made a small separate compartment in one 
corner of the immense studio, and behind them she 
carried on that rnake-shift domestic economy called 
“ light housekeeping.” When she once more emerged, 
the last vestige of likeness to the veiled statue had been 
obliterated. 

A coarse linen apron had been drawn over her dress 
and pinned to the shoulders. An old brown-gauze veil 
was tied carefully over her hair. She was pardonably 
proud of her hair, and the marble chips and dust upon 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


II 


which she was going to wage a war of extermination 
would not improve its glossy softness. In her hands 
were a broom, dust-pan, and duster. In her soul was 
a determination to “ make a day of it” among the piles 
of broken plaster casts, heaps of artistic rubbish, and 
lurking dust-holes which will accumulate around most 
men. 

There was no carpet on the marquette floor, only a 
multiplicity of rugs, most of them ghastly-looking skins 
of wild beasts who had escaped decapitation. As an 
initial step in this crusade against disorder, she gathered 
these into a large armful, and, going towards the door, 
was about to precipitate them into the corridor, when 
she recoiled suddenly from, and was recoiled from 
with equal suddenness by, a person without. 

“Hold ! ” The command was given almost hysteri- 
cally. 

Two delicate tan gloves were raised deprecatingly, and 
across the grinning masks of the defunct tigers, bears, and 
wolves the house-cleaner stared into the dancing eyes 
of an extremely handsome young woman, who stood 
before her, arrayed from hat to boots with a modest 
daintiness quite in keeping with those protesting 
suedes. Both women laughed at the thought of what 
might have happened, after which the crusader apolo- 
gized politely. 

“Dont speak of it,” her visitor said, fervently. “I 
am only too thankful to escape death by suffocation.’ 
Suddenly dropping the ineffectual barriers she had 
raised against the wild beasts, she asked : 

“Is not this Mr. Mackaye’s studio? Mr. Mackaye, 
the sculptor ? ” 


12 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


Yes ; but he is out/’ 

‘‘ I know that. ‘ Out ’ stared me in the face from the 
card-rack in the hall downstairs. That is exactly why 
I kept on up. ” 

She laughed easily, after the manner of women con- 
scious of fine teeth, and stepping across the pile of 
rugs, which now lay on the floor of the corridor, she 
invaded the denuded studio uninvited. Once inside 
she took possession of the most comfortable chair in 
sight, and resting her small gloved hands on its arms, 
calmly gazed about her with bright, interested eyes. 

“But Mr. Mackaye is out for some days,"' the house- 
cleaner said, looking rather disapprovingly down at the 
self-possessed young woman in the big chair. “Per- 
haps he will not be home until after a late dinner on 
Thursday. ” 

“Gone with the Murrays on their yacht ? ” 

The invader asked this question, with her pretty head 
held bird-wise.” 

“ No, not with the Murrays. Did you want to leave 
an order ” 

The girl in the chair laughed again lightly, and, spring- 
ing nimbly to her feet, laid her delicate gloves softly on 
the coarse brown linen that protected the questioner s 
waist. 

“My good girl, see here. By-the-way, ” questioningly, 
“ are you the person who has charge of Mr. Mackaye’s 
studio ? 

The heart beneath that coarse linen apron gave a 
fierce bound, then as suddenly resumed its calm, even 
pulsations. It might lose Ran a lucrative order if 
this fashionable dame should suspect she was talking to 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


13 

Mrs. Randall Mackaye. People judged so superficially, 
that to find the artist’s wife doing menial service would 
be an advertisement of the artist’s penury. 

“Yes,” she said, quietly, nothing remaining of her 
anger but a spot of red on either cheek-bone, “I am the 
person who cares for this studio.” 

“And see him often, of course.? ” 

“Pretty often. He’s out a good deal. Mr. Mackaye, 
I suppose you mean, by he .? ” 

“Now, see here, my good girl ; I hope you are dis- 
creet. ” 

“I try to be.” 

“That’s right, and rest assured you shan’t lose any- 
thing by being so with me. I am dying to see some- 
thing in Mr. Mackaye’s studio — something he is at 
work on. But, of course, he is not to know anything 
about my being here, you know.” 

“Then he did not ask you to come.? ” 

“ No, oh no ! this is a little lark of my own devising. 
That’s horridly slangy, but true, none the less. ” 

“ And you are not afraid of his being angry .?” 

The laugh with which the girl received this sugges- 
tion was so full of airy confidence that Randall Mackaye’s 
wife writhed fiercely under it for a full second before she 
said : 

“The idea seems to amuse you.” 

^Mt does,” said the girl, with another insolent little 
laugh ; “we are such very good friends, you know.” 

The next moment she was on her feet, moving eagerly 
towards the veiled statue. “ It must be under there.” 

“Why not wait until he is ready to exhibit his 
work ? ” 


14 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


“That will be forever. He says I must wait until it 
is put on exhibition at the Academy of Design. But 
that isn’t fair.” 

She was standing by the statue now, but between her 
and it stood the other woman, stately, determined, im- 
movable ; only the spot of red on her ivory cheeks and 
the kindling of her grave eyes telling of the inward 
tumult. 

“Not fair to whom.? ” 

“To me.” 

“Why should you be favored beyond the general 
public?.” 

“ Because — because — I know all about it.” This with 
the most delicious flush and a knowing nod of her 
pretty head. “I am it — you know. I — inspired it — you 
see.” 

“ Oh ! ” from Marianne. 

“Yes, and I know what it is going to be called — and 
— you see,” explanatorily, “Mr. Mackaye and I are the 
best friends in the world.” 

“Yes?” 

“Yes, and — and I know the lady whose features he 
is reproducing in ^Love’s Young Dream.’ That is 
what he is going to call it. The statue, I mean. ” 

“You know the lady? ” 

“Yes. Very — very — well indeed.” 

There was no misreading the glow of personal 
vanity gratified, in the bright upturned face before her. 
Mrs. Mackaye turned from that illumined face to shake 
some marble dust from the folds of the white cloth that 
shrouded the statue, but made no motion to lift it. She 
hoped her own face did not tell its tale as plainly as did 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


15 


that girl’s. There was a soft metallic click as the young 
lady opened and closed her pocket-book. Then she laid 
one little gloved hand, with a bill crumpled in its palm, 
persuasively on Mrs. Mackaye’s : 

“ My good girl, just one little peep. He will never 
know it. I should not dare acknowledge it. He might 
think it fast, you know.” 

The sculptor’s wife was calmly smoothing the bank- 
bill out in the palm of her left hand. 

‘ ‘ What is this for ? ” she asked, dully. 

“For you.” 

“For me } ” 

“Yes” — her visitor was waxing petulant — “for you. 
To pay you for just lifting a corner of that cloth and 
letting me have one little look at the statue. If I knew 
how. I’d do it myself, but I am afraid I might break 
something. ” 

“ So am I. ” 

“ But you have seen him do it. I am sure you must 
have. ” 

“Yes, I have seen him at work on it. But I am 
afraid too.” 

“No harm shall come to you.” 

“ That sounds potential.” 

“I am potential,” with another rippling laugh, 
whose cool insolence sent the hot blood seething and 
dancing through Marianne Mackaye’s veins in a perfect 
lava-flood of passion. 

“I am afraid,” she said, very slowly, waiting until she 
was quite sure of her voice, “that I shall have to ask 
you to go away now. I am not at liberty to show any 
of Mr. Mackaye’s work to strangers, and I must take 


i6 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


this chance to give his studio a good overhauling. He 
does not often admit strangers to this room, even when 
he’s at home.” 

“But I tell you I am not a stranger. I am his very, 
very best friend. And — and — he’ll never, never know 
I’ve been here. Not from me.” 

“Nor from me,” said Marianne, slowly. “Please go 
now. I could not tell him if I wanted to ; I don’t know 
who you are.” 

Her visitor turned away with an irritated laugh. 
“ You are horrid.” Then, with a swirl of silken dra- 
peries, she faced towards the statue once more. 

“I will make it ten.” 

“ Make what ten ? 

“ I will pay you ten dollars and insure you against 
the wrath to come.” 

“That I am quite sure you could not do.” Marianne 
slowly opened her hand and let the forgotten bill fall 
on the floor between them. ‘ ‘ I am sorry to seem unac- 
commodating to so generous a young lady, but as 
long as Mr. Mackaye’s studio is in my charge, things 
must not be touched. Won’t you be so good as to go 
away now ? ” 

“You arc simply abominable.” 

“Yes. ” 

There seemed nothing left to be said or done on either 
side. The visitor turned away, with a scowl on her 
pretty face, and began coolly making the circuit of the 
studio. She would beat no hasty retreat before this in- 
corruptible dragon in the coarse apron and bandaged 
head. It was humiliating to be thwarted by one of 
“that class.” Usually it was easy enough to buy con- 
cessions from them. All this before she had reached 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


17 


the door by which she had entered. There she came 
to an abrupt pause, and made a little exclamation of 
delight. 

“ I did not know he painted too ! These are divine.” 
She touched three unframed pictures successively with 
the ferule of her lace-trimmed parasol. 

“I think he does not lay much stress on those little 
things,” Marianne said, sending her voice coldly across 
the room from where she still stood by the veiled image. 
“They are mere stop-gaps.” 

“Stop-gaps.? Oh, yes. What the artists call pot- 
boilers. Poor, dear old fellow ! ” 

Her voice had died away into a sort of coo. No ear 
less keenly attent than a jealous woman’s could have 
caught those last few words. With them, the girl laid 
her hand on the knob of the door and passed out into 
the corridor, with no word of farewell for the “incor- 
ruptible dragon ” who stood pale and still beside the 
veiled statue. 

An irrepressible impulse carried Marianne swiftly 
back toward the studio window. She was just in time 
to see the shining door of a shining coupe open and engulf 
Ran’s vanquished visitor. A footman in buff tights took 
the adventurous young woman’s orders through the 
door, before springing nimbly to his place by the side 
of a red-faced coachman, similarly attired. Four top- 
boots were planted immovably against the shining 
dash-board, and, with a flash of silver-plated harness and 
a clatter of high-stepping hoofs, the girl who had pro- 
claimed herself the sculptor’s “very best friend” to the 
sculptor’s wife was whirled out of sight. 

“ And to think,” said Marianne, “that I do not even 
know who she is ! ” 


i8 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


CHAPTER II. 

Returning home between the reasonable hours of 
eleven and twelve o’clock, a few nights later on, Randall 
Mackaye inserted his latch-key in the key-hole of the 
studio with premeditated softness. It had occurred to 
him, while feeling in his vest pocket for it, not to arouse 
his wife by any undue boisterousness in the matter of 
finding his way through the crowded studio. 

“Poor little woman! It has been a long, stupid 
time to her, I guess. Better let her sleep it off. ” 

What the it was which Mr. Mackaye preferred his wife 
should sleep off he did not formulate very precisely, 
even to his conscience. He fitted the latch-key with 
unusual gentleness and opened the door with a cautious 
movement, which under some circumstances might 
have suggested apprehension. But he was duly sober, 
and, besides, his Marianne was no shrew. 

He gave an exclamation of pleased surprise on enter- 
ing the dimly lighted room. His artistic perceptions 
had been most unexpectedly gratified. In the cushioned 
window-seat which filled the broad space in front of 
the large, double, front window, Marianne was curled up 
in a position so admirably adapted to a sculptor’s pur- 
poses that it must have been premeditated, he thought. 
Leaning on the elbow, which rested on the stone sill of 
the window, with her gaze turned outward and upward ; 
her pure profile cast into clear prominence by the cluster 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


19 

of electric lights caught midway between heaven and 
earth out there in the square ; the loose folds of her 
white wrapper sweeping the floor about her, she sat in 
seeming unconsciousness of his entrance, until he had 
crossed the room, tossed his hat and light top-coat into 
a corner, and coming over to her had lifted one ©f the 
long heavy plaits of hair which fell over her shoulders, 
arranged for the night, and carried it gallantly to his 
lips. 

“ You beautiful witch, what do you mean by sitting 
here, posing for a statue of Reverie at this hour of the 
night } ” 

He held the long soft plait of shining hair in his hand, 
as he bent over to kiss her on the forehead. His breath 
was hot and vinous, and the odor of dead cigars clung 
to his mustache. She shrank from him involuntarily 
and made a fleeting repelling gesture with her slim 
white hand, as she turned her searching eyes on his 
face. 

“As you please, my lady fair.'’ He flung the shining 
plait of hair from him with petulant impatience. “You 
know I’m not much of a beggar in that line. The next 
kiss, I imagine, will be a free-will offering on your side.” 

Marianne rose slowly to her feet. All the hot, seeth- 
ing, angry speculations which had made the last two 
days a period of prolonged pain culminated in a bit of 
commonplace at which she could not help smiling in 
bitter irony. 

“ Shall I get you something to eat. Ran .? ” 

It showed the force of habit. She had been accus- 
tomed to place his physical necessities among matters 
of the very first importance. 


20 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


He waived the suggestion aside with the airy con- 
tempt of a man who had been unusually well fed for a 
few days. 

“Thanks, no. I am not always thinking of the inner 
man. Been lonely, Nan-nan .? ” 

The easiest chair in the room was drawn up in front 
of the window seat, and by it was a table with his 
smoking apparatus and a bottle of Apollinaris water, with 
glass all ready to his hand. He flung himself into the 
chair, and without pressing an answer to his last 
question, he poured himself out a glass of the mineral 
water, which he drank off at a breath. 

“Any letters, papers, visitors.? Anything at all 
happened since I left .? ” 

He was wiping the Apollinaris from the silken tips 
of his long mustache, while trying to read the in- 
scrutable young face before him. There was a low 
lamp on the table, over whose globe a rose-colored 
shade had been drawn. His wife had seated herself 
again on his refusal of refreshment, but remained 
strangely silent. It was not like her to “sulk.” He 
had never known her to do such a thoroughly com- 
monplace thing. 

It was she who was always urging his acceptance of 
invitations from the people of wealth and fashion who 
had “heard of him.” It was she who was always 
telling him that “people must become personally in- 
terested in him, the man, before they would cordially 
recognize his work as an artist.” And she had sent him 
off on that very visit to the Fosters in the best possible 
humor. She was uncommonly unlike herself to-night. 

‘ ‘ Confound that red shade ; ’’ he twitched the offend- 


A spLemdid egotist. 


21 


ing bit of tissue-paper from the globe and cast it from 
him ; “it makes you look ghastly.” 

“Red does not usually have that effect,” said 
Marianne, putting up a white hand between her eyes 
and the sudden glare of gas. Her eyes were red and 
swollen, a fact which she preferred not to disclose. 

“You look ghastlier than ever ! ” her husband said, 
testily, in offended tones. 

“Do I.? Then you had better put back the shade. 
Yes, something has happened, to answer one of your 
questions. ” 

She left him in suspense while she made the circuit of 
the long room to fetch from behind the portieres a red 
woollen cape, which she threw over her thinly-clad 
shoulders. The cape was tied about her throat by a 
satin ribbon when she once more seated herself in front 
of him, and its floating ends gave inexhaustible occupa- 
tion to her restless fingers. 

“ Well, what ? ” with boyish impatience. 

Either she had changed her mind since going for the 
wrap, or she was bent upon the trivial to-night. 

“ I have given the studio a splendid overhauling. You 
know I told you I was going to devote the time to it. ” 

“And have simply worked yourself down. If women 
would only recognize the fact that it is as much their 
duty to look beautiful for their husbands as it is to 
attend to their creature comforts, it would bea deucedly 
good thing all round.” 

“And I have made a discovery, Randall,” Marianne 
went on, passing silently over this aggrieved truism. 

“Well.?” 

“ I have discovered that your masterpiece is not 


22 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


getting on very fast. I expended half of one of my long 
hours criticising ‘Love’s Young Dream’ this morning.” 

“Yes ? Of course you found no end of fault with it.” 
He stood somewhat in awe of Marianne as an art critic. 
She was both true and fearless. 

“ As a work of art ? No.” 

“I did not know it was open to criticism on any other 
score. As a likencca, perhaps.? If you go on losing 
flesh at the rate you have done lately, we’ll both find it 
hard to see the model in it. ” 

“Why don’t you work harder on it, Randall ? harder 
and faster ? Why do you let days and days' go by with- 
out ever even looking at the work which you say is to 
bring you fame and fortune.? How can you be satisfied 
to see it standing there shrouded day after day, weeks 
and months rolling by, and it no nearer completion .? ” 
She had never before reproached him, laggard that he 
was. She had been content to work for him, in her 
way ; to save for him, manage for him, to ward off, as 
far as possible, all the sordid considerations of their 
everyday needs, so that he could have all the more 
freedom of mind and body to devote to his masterpiece. 

She recalled how she had flushed with pride on that 
morning, so long gone now, when he had broached to 
her the inception of this great work of art, which 
was to startle an admiring world into an attitude of 
worship for his genius. She did not lose sight of pos- 
sibly accruing gain therefrom. Her whole life had been 
one of practical endeavor. She had managed and 
pinched and manoeuvred for Randall, just as she had 
managed and pinched and manoeuvred for her father, 
the impecunious portrait-painter who had been Ran- 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


23 

airs first instructor. But she hoped great things from 
this masterpiece. 

She had thrilled with gratified pride when Randall 
had said, intones of positive conviction, “that nowhere 
in the wide world might he hope to find so perfect a 
model for his masterpiece as in his own beautiful Mari- 
anne. And so the statue had seemed to be almost a 
part of herself. She had never discussed it cold-blood- 
edly before. If it had taken her twenty-two years of 
unconscious industry to achieve such a degree of physi- 
cal perfection as was hers, why should she expect Ran 
to produce its duplicate with a blow or two of his ham- 
mer and chisel ? She had often laughed at her own 
silent reasoning on this point, and had possessed her 
soul in patience. 

But that had all been before a strange woman, smooth 
of cheek and bright of eye, had come into the quiet 
studio and left behind her such a horrible pain and 
cruel suspicion — a suspicion which she hated so to put 
into words. 

The shame of it was too great. Careless, selfish, 
egotistical. All these, in bitter self-communion, she 
had admitted “ Ran might be. But a deliberate lie ! A 
lie, if not to her, to that ‘ ‘ girl. '' Could he be guilty of it ? 
She was suddenly consumed by a fierce impatience to 
have him finish his work and put it before the world. 
Then that other woman, the woman who had made 
the time of Ran’s absence a time of torture such as she 
hoped never to experience again, would stand self- 
accused of monstrous vanity. She had reasoned it all 
out from a wife’s standpoint, and the result was, 
strange to say, in Randall’s favor. 


u 


A SPLENDID EC OTIS 7: 


Perhaps he had made some flattering speech to a silly 
girl, and the visit of the other morning had been the result. 
She would not tell him of that importunate visitor. 

“ Yes, Ran,*’ she said, once more, with a ring of irritat- 
ed impatience altogether novel in his experience, “why 
don’t you work at your statue steadily, finish it, and put 
it on exhibition? You must do it, Randall.” 

“ D d if that isn’t just like a woman ! Nag at a 

man to send him in one direction, and then fly at him 
like a fury because he doesn’t go just exactly in the 
opposite direction. Egad, it’s maddening ! ’’ 

He sprang from the easy-chair and began pacing the 
studio with that long stride of his which Marianne 
always said suggested boundless stretches of breezy 
moorland to be gotten over. 

“Who was it that urged me to accept that invitation 
to the Fosters ? ” he stopped in front of her to ask. 

“I did. ” 

“Who is it that is always saying, ‘You must become 
personally known, and that among the wealthy classes, 
if you ever hope to make a support out of your chisel 
for yourself and me ’ ? ” 

‘ ‘ I said it. ” 

“Who is it,” going on with his fierce catechism and 
his fierce pedestrianism, “that is always saying, ‘You 
must go out where you can see beautiful things. Go 
where works of art are to be examined. Mingle with 
people who know art, love art, exalt art ; are rich 
enough to patronize art ’ ? ” 

“I. I plead guilty to every indictment.” 

“Well, then, what is a fellow to do ? ” 

Either he was physically exhausted, or the puerility 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


25 

of his own arguments struck him with such force just 
here as to cause him to sit down suddenly and fall to 
mopping his forehead with a white-silk handkerchief, 
which Marianne recognized, with a sickening sensation 
of surprise, exhaled the same faint perfume of heliotrope 
which had stifled her when Ran s visitor was in the 
studio. 

She was sorry she had not borne in mind the irritat- 
ing effect of a single glass of wine on her husband. It 
had been better not to have broached the subject 
of the statue at all to-night, but she could not leave 
it just where it was. Having said anything at all she 
must say more. 

“I did not mean to anger you, Randall, but I feel 
that I have a right to urge you to devote a little more 
time to a piece of work which piomises so much, you 
know.” 

“Oh! I know everything. I know that because I 
chanced to leave you alone for a few days you grew 
cross and morbid, and have been bottling up your spite 
to pour it out on my head as a soil of counter-irritant. 
It might have marred all my chances of successful drudg- 
ery in the future to have had an entirely pleasant visit 
among cultivated and amiable people, and then come 
home to an amiable wife to finish out the evening in 
quiet talk, you know. Egad 1 when I opened that door 
and saw you sitting there looking so serene and pretty, 
my heart gave a great leap for very tenderness, and I said 
to myself, she’s the very pearl of wives, waiting up to 
finish off the evening so nicely. I saw you were sulk- 
ing about something as soon as I spoke to you. It 
puzzled me at first. But I see now, you’re thinking 


26 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


that, when the statue is done, should I ever acknowl- 
edge that my wife furnished the model, people would 
laugh at the idea. " 

‘‘ Then,” she said, standing up before him with tightly 
clasped hands, “you will have to transfer the honor to 
some other woman.” 

He laughed mirthlessly : “That’s an easy thing to 
do, but so long as I am hampered as I am, it’s not likely 
it ever will be finished. ” 

“Hampered, Randall?” 

All the pain and the injustice and the brutality that 
had been crowded into that hour seemed as idle as the 
wind by comparison with that crowning piece of bar- 
barous injustice. 

“Yes, hampered.” 

He repeated the word waveringly, then striding 
away from the possibility of a retort, entered their 
sleeping-rocm and slammed the door after him. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


27 


CHAPTER III. 


“ Hampered ! 

The word repeated itself with galling persistency. 
There was no ridding herself of the sound of it, as it 
had come with rasping harshness from her husband’s 
lips. It haunted her that night, as she sat there, white, 
still, and cold, listening to Randall’s rather boisterous 
preparations for retiring. She could not recall ever hav- 
ing seen him in quite such a rage. It haunted her long 
after she had put away the tray and pushed back the 
easy-chair and arranged the sofa-bed with mechanical 
precision for her own uneasy slumbers. It haunted 
her the next morning when she prepared Rail’s break- 
fast, with delicate skill, and left it on the gas-stove to 
keep warm until he should choose to dispose of it. 

Her own was a matter of small moment. She hur- 
ried through with it, and seated herself before an easel 
on which a small figure-piece stood. It was in a nearly 
finished state when she sat down to it, and it had pro- 
gressed by a whole hour’s gteady application when the 
chamber door, which Mr. Mackaye had slammed with 
such masculine and unnecessary vigor at the time of 
his violent exodus the night previous, opened to admit 
him to the studio. With his advent there came a re- 
freshing suggestion of perfumed soaps, good cologne, 
and cool morning attire deliberately donned. 


28 


A SPLEMDID EGOTIST. 


He was a luxurious animal, this Washington Square 
sculptor, and never found himself in such mental or 
emotional straits as to affect the careful paring of his 
polished nails, or the studied arrangement of his elegant 
side-whiskers. He came into the studio that morning 
amiably minded to obliterate all memory of the pre- 
vious evening>’s unpleasantness by a forgiving kiss. *Ht 
was not often,” he reminded himself, while adjusting 
his flesh-white necktie, “ that ‘ Nan-nan ' was so try- 
ing.” 

Marianne drew her brush somewhat wildly across the 
surface of her palette, mixing her pigments recklessly, 
as he came across the studio and, standing behind her, 
laid his cool, fresh hands caressingly on her shoulders. 

It was an invitation, but she did not accept it. She 
turned her head neither to the right nor to the left. She 
could see the long acorn nails, shell-tinted and smooth, 
with their carefully preserved crowns, out of the corners 
of her drooping eyes. All the reds in her paint-box 
seemed transferred to her cheeks. Randall could feel 
her trembling under his hands. “What an inconven- 
iently intense creature she is ! ” 

“When the masterpiece is done,” he said, breaking 
the awkward silence, during which a kiss of reconcilia- 
tion had been tacitly offered and tacitly rejected, “I 
shall insist upon your giving up this job-work, ‘ Nan- 
nan.' Those pretty little trifles of yours are catch- 
penny affairs, which appeal to the uneducated fancy of 
the herd, but you can scarcely take much satisfaction 
in them yourself.” 

“Not a great deal. But they serve as stop-gaps, you 
know, and we are not independent of them as yet.” 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


29 


**Not yet. And if they serve to amuse you — well. 
As for me, I don’t care to prostitute genius at such a 
ruinous price. For instance, what do you expect for 
that trifle? A sketchy, nice little thing, upon my word. 
You have talent, Nan, undoubted talent.” 

“Fifteen dollars!” said Marianne, laconically. His 
tones and the subject-matter of them grated harshly 
on her overwrought nerves. One voluntary word of 
manly, sincere regret for his brutality of the night be- 
fore, and all might have been well. As it was, he only 
strengthened her resolution to ask him a very serious 
question as soon as he should have breakfasted. All 
the conditions must be favorable to him. 

“You are coming with me ? ” he said, turning from 
her with a frown, at her suggestion that he had better 
take his breakfast. 

“No; it is all ready to your hand. I must finish 
this to-day. It goes with the other three. The man 
will be here for them at half-past ten.” 

“You had better have worked on them, then, while 
I was out of the way. You would have been better 
employed than moping yourself into such a deuced fit 
of the sulks.” 

She saved her reply to this unnecessary fling until he 
came back from behind the portieres, after his solitary 
breakfast. 

“Now a cigar, and then for a good day’s work 
on ‘Love’s Young Dream.’ I will show you what a 
good boy I can be when I want to be. ” 

She laid down her work-tools and came over to him, 
standing before him pale and resolute. 

“Ran, I think love’s young dream must be pretty 


30 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


well over between man and wife when such passages 
as last night’s are possible. Don’t you ? ” 

He looked at her darkly over the flame of the match 
he was holding to his cigar ; but she was not to be 
deterred from her fixed purpose by the threat of an eye 
or the angry red of a man’s cheek. 

“I don’t c^e to have you say you did not mean 
a word that you said last night, Ran, *’ she went on, 
quietly ; “for no one ever does mean half they say in 
temper. But you made use of one word, Ran, yes, and 
you repeated it, which you must take back before 
things can be as they were with us.” 

“ Must take back ! You take lofty grounds, Mrs. 
Mackaye.” 

He was sitting below her now, with his handsome 
head thrown back against the crimson plush head-rest, 
which she had bound with gay ribbon bows about the 
back of his bent-wood chair. The smoke from his 
cigar curled toward the ceiling, making a thin blue veil 
between her and the mocking devil in his splendid 
eyes. 

“I take just grounds, Randall. You don’t know 
how hard it is for me to bring up that hateful discussion 
again. If you did, you would understand my underly- 
ing purpose better. ” 

“I take it that nothing is easier for some women 
than to nurse a grievance. Your underlying purpose, I 
imagine, is to extract from me an abject admission of 
remorse for my recent pleasuring. You would delight 
in hearing me call myself all sorts of ugly names. ” 

“ You know better than that, Randall. You are talk- 
ing sheer nonsense now.” 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


31 

As she had rarely ever defied him, she had no measure 
for his irritability under contradiction. 

‘ ‘ What in the devil has come over you in the last 
twenty-four hours ? I fail to recognize you in your new 
role of shrew. ” He was trembling with anger. 

She flung her clasped hands outward and upwards 
with a gesture of passionate impatience. 

“My old role was that of a patient minister to a 
splendid egotist, Randall. I have nourished your selfish- 
ness and arrogance by my absolute acceptance of you 
just as you were. I’m not going to analyze your weak- 
nesses or your failures, even now. You said last 
night that you were hampered in your life’s work — 
hampered so that you could accomplish nothing ; at 
least, that is the substance of what you said, wasn’t it, 
Randall ? ” 

“ Well, yes, I believe I did use words to that effect.” 

“ Did you mean them, Randall .? ” 

“An artist is always hampered, to a certain degree, by 
marrying early in life,” he said, critically examining 
the glowing end of his cigar. He was not brave enough 
to look her in the face while stabbing her to the heart. 
“ Did you ever hear that sentiment before } ” 

“Yes. That is exactly what father said to you when 
you told him you and I wanted to get married. Father 
had great confidence in your ability, and thought we 
were very foolish to think of matrimony.” 

“The old gentleman was a man of considerable pene- 
tration. I think better of his judgment now than I did 
then.” 

“You mean that for me, Ran.” 


32 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


He flung his cigar into the cuspidor with a muttered 
curse. 

“ D n it, you are bent on driving me out of the 

house, aren’t you .? You’ve spoiled my holiday for me, 
and you spoiled last night. You’ve spoiled my cigar 
now, and you’ve spoiled a good morning’s work. 
What are you driving at ? Out with it. ’’ 

“ I am driving at this. You must say that you did or 
did not mean that you are hampered in your work by me. 
This is not simply a contest of words, Randall. I know, 
as well as father does, that you are a man of genius, and 
that it is in you to do great and good work, if ” 

‘ ‘ If what } ” 

Her prolonged silence compelled him to ask this ques- 
tion. Her arms hung straight by her sides, each hand 
was clinched until the nails pressed into the soft, pink- 
fleshed palms. Her eyes flashed and darkened like un- 
certain electric lights. Her lips, cheeks, and brow were 
marble- white. 

“ If you are not hampered.” 

“ Don’t make a fool of yourself, Marianne. I sup- 
pose the majority of men do make their flights on 
clipped wings. But it is not on record, I believe, that any 
feathered soarer ever sat down to contemplate its muti- 
lated quills. I suppose I will do as well as any other clip- 
winged thing. If there is anything in me, poverty will 
spur it out of me, I imagine. Our prospects are not the 
most brilliant in the world. ” 

“ If you were not married, you would be a great pet 
among the wealthy and fashionable patrons of art, I 
suppose. Ran. You have just that distinguished sort of 
good looks which captivate women at first sight. ” 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


33 

“ You overpower me with your remarkable transitions 
from grave to gay, from lively to severe, my dear.” He 
smiled graciously into the grave, white face before him, 
and caressingly smoothed his side-whiskers. 

“And you would make influential friends among 
them, ” she went on, unsmilingly. 

“Not unlikely. I've met some very nice people since 
my Psyche was put on exhibition. Art should be nour- 
rished on dainties or it languishes. I am afraid there 
is not the making of a garret genius in me. But what 
infernal nonsense we both are talking.” 

“You would be happier that way. Ran.” 

“ Happier which way .? ” 

“Unhampered! — free to wander in Bohemia with 
your brother artists, with no haunting thoughts of a wife 
waiting for you at home ; free to accept pleasant invi- 
tations to grand houses, where beautiful women in silks 
and jewels will exalt you in your own estimation, by 
swinging the censer of adulation before you until you 
are intoxicated and ready for still higher flights ; free 
from the harsh necessity of coming back to a poor little 
make-shift of a home where stupid calculations about 
expenses must be endured occasionally. I am the 
skeleton at your feasts, now. Ran. If it were not for me 
you could go to your daily tasks warmed and soothed 
and inspired by all the nice flattering things that have 
dropped from nice flattering lips.” 

“ I am afraid I am just cad enough to hanker after the 
soft side of life as you picture it. It’s awfully unnatural, 
we’ll admit, for argument’s sake, but demned if I wouldn’t 
rather be flattered than scolded, any day in the year.” 


34 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


He had his hat in his hand by this time and was 
moving towards the door. 

“ Then you won’t take it back, Ran ?” 

Take what back ? ” 

“That word ‘hampered.’” 

“ You’ve selected a queer mode of making me do it,” 
he said, with a coarse laugh, as he flung himself out of 
the studio, slamming the door fiercely after him. 

“ He does mean it, then,” Marianne said, shivering 
as if with a chill. 

She went back to the picture on the easel and worked 
with such unflagging energy, that when the picture- 
dealer came promptly at half-past ten o’clock, he found 
four very creditable “pot-boilers” ranged side-by-side 
along the studio wall. 

His verdict was a favorable one. Marianne discourag- 
ed his efforts at art criticism. He was crude, and she 
was hurried. She had a great deal to do that day, and 
she needed all her strength for it. 

Four o’clock found Randall Mackaye sufficiently tired 
of himself, of the three picture auctions he had wandered 
into one after the other, and of the men he found 
smoking in every studio he climbed into, to incline him 
for home and rest before dressing for a dinner that he 
had accepted an invitation to out at the Fosters. He 
pondered this matter uncomfortably while mounting 
the stairs to his own studio. 

‘ ‘ If I’d known how things were going to turn out. 
I’d have refused. I suppose there will be the deuce to 
pay when she finds Fm off again for this evening.” 

But there was no one to object to his going out again 
that evening. The studio vvas as quiet as a church in 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


35 


week-time, when he opened its door. Relighted the gas 
and looked on the table for any mail matter that might 
have come during the day. He supposed and hoped 
that Marianne might have gone put to “walk off her 
sulks.” 

There were two letters lying under the drop-light : 
one was a badly folded affair in a crumpled, unstamped 
envelope ; the other, a modish cream-tinted affair, had 
come through the mail and brought with it the breath 
of heliotrope. 

Both were quite short. The heliotrope affair he 
read first. It was simply an announcement that Miss 
Jeanne Lenox would call for him in the carriage that 
evening to take him to the dinner at the Rockwoods, as 
it looked “so much like rain.” 

“A confoundedly impudent proceeding,” he said, 
wrinkling his broad, smooth forehead perplexedly. “I 
wish that girl had some sensible womankind to look 
after her.” 

None the less there was a glow of gratified vanity at 
his heart when he laid down Miss Jeanne Lenox’s thick 
missive and took up that other flimsy affair, which, 
hastily penned by a hand trembling with agitation, had 
carried with it no suggestion of Marianne’s large, bold 
English characters, consequently had not received the 
respectful consideration of a glance thus far. Three ten- 
dollar bills, compactly folded, fell from the sheet on 
which his wife had scrawled her final decision : 

“ My dear Ran : — I have tried very hard to think that 
it did not matter much whether or not you took back 
that terrible word ‘ hampered,’ but it does. I was never 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


36 

much of a hand to enlarge on my own emotions, and it 
does not matter much what or how I feel while writing 
this, but I cannot make up my mind to stay where I 
stand in the way of your fullest development as an 
artist No one need know that any change has taken 
place in your private life. Indeed, no one in your new 
circle knows that you have a wife, I imagine. I am not 
blaming you for this, for I have not forgotten that we 
agreed that, until you should have gained your foothold 
and I was able to make a proper appearance in public, 
I would remain unknown. 

“As long as we were sure of each other, what did it 
matter to us whether the people who patronized your 
art and petted you for its sake knew anything of the 
background to your life ? A poor, struggling artist, with 
a* shabby, economical wife behind the scenes, would 
have found no favor in the circle upon which art is 
dependent for its sustenance. 

“ I think, when one finds that one has made a false 
step, it is best and bravest to retrace it before it is too 
late. I don’t believe it is too late in your case, we have 
been married such a little while ; only two years and a 
half. I leave you half of what the man paid for my trifles 
this morning. I am afraid your exchequer is rather 
empty. 

‘ ‘ I want you to do yourself full justice, Randall. I shall 
hear of you should you ever become the great artist 
which you ought to become, now that you are no longer 
hampered by — 

“ Marianne.” 


“Who would have believed she had such a devil of a 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


37 


temper? She is positively vicious,” said Randall, 
tearing his wife's letter into jagged pieces and throw- 
ing the fragments into the waste-paper-basket under the 
table. “I suppose she has gone to the old man with 
some lively statement. She can sulk it out on that line. 
Pouting is a game two can play at.” 

The bills he transferred to the inside pocket of his vest 

It occurred to him, while dressing for the dinner at 
the Rockwoods, as rather convenient than otherwise 
that Marianne should have selected that particular 
evening to transport her bad humor to her father's house 
in Hoboken. It would lessen the awkwardness of hav- 
ing Miss Lenox call for him in her carriage. 


38 


A SPLENDID egotist. 


CHAPTER IV. 

“ Come and make me beautiful for to night, Florence,” 
Miss Jeanne Lenox said peremptorily, giving the last 
syllable of her maid’s name the full benefit of a some- 
what dubious French accent. 

“It has a soothing effect on Florence to be called 
Y\o-rancey' Miss Lenox had been known to say apol- 
ogetically, when her father, with masculine lack of 
penetration, charged her with affectation. 

“ Miss expects to meet her lover, then ? ” said Florepce, 
the French maid, laying the novel she had been reading 
before Jeanne’s advent, open, face downward, so as 
not to lose her place. 

Jeanne had come in with both hands full of small 
hard parcels, done up in smooth white paper, and tied 
about with pink twine. The dressing-table was strewn 
v/ith these, and, hastily ungloving, she fell to work on 
the pink knots. 

“ Not exactly — lover — Flo — ranee, but— dear me ! can 
I possibly have been so stupid as to forget the Pozzoni } 
You told me to get the Pozzoni powder, didn’t you ? No, 
not lover, Florence ; admirer, friend. Oh ! Florence, he 
is just splendid. Everybody adores him.” 

A sceptical smile flitted across Florence’s sallow face, 
but was soon swallowed up in her discreet eyes, which 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


39 

never saw one jot or one tittle more than it was proper 
for them to see. 

She had been lady’s-maid both in Paris and in New 
York too many years not to have outlived all enthusiasm 
save for her art. In her way Florence too was an 
artist. That splendid lover of Mademoiselle’s over 
whom everyone was raving- was a thing of small 
moment by himself — a matter of course. 

Where did Miss get this } ” 

She was holding a vial up to the light, examining its 
milky contents through the opaline glass with kindling 
eyes. 

Jeanne looked at her anxiously. “Don’t you like 
it, Florence ? They told me at the bazaar that it would 
make a hideous old woman of sixty look like a beauti- 
ful young girl of sixteen. ” 

“ Miss Lenox is neither sixty nor sixteen,” said Flo- 
rence, oracularly. She had the stopper out of the vial 
now, and was inhaling the perfume in long, ecstatic 
whiffs. “The genuine article ! The one only cosmet- 
illine. I did not know one could get it here. My poor, 
dear Lady Eunice, how often have I prepared her for 
her drive or dinner or ball with this very same precious 
ointment ! Lady Eunice was a beauty.” 

Jeanne liked to hear about the titled ladies who had 
been served by Florence on the other side of the water. 
It enhanced her own importance in having come into 
final possession of such a treasure. 

Everybody called Florence “Jeanne Lenox’s treas- 
ure.” Mrs. Rockwood said she could think of nothing 
more fortunate than for a motherless girl like Jeanne, 
with no brothers or sisters, with her father absorbed in 


40 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


Wall Street, and her mother’s sister, her ostensible 
chaperon, lame and hypochondriacal, to have such a 
good, sensible, steady creature as Florence always at 
hand ; and Jeanne agreed with everybody, 

“Tell me about your Lady Eunice, Florence,” she 
said, obediently slipping her plump white arms into the 
lace-trimmed dressing-sack which Florence was holding 
out for her to invest herself in, preparatory to being 
made beautiful. 

“There is not much to tell,” said Florence, placing 
a chair in front of the long mirror for Jeanne’s conveni- 
ence, before beginning the mysteries of the toilet in 
grave earnest. “My Lady Eunice made a great mis- 
take in life, and it made her look old before her time; 
one should not need such things,” shaking the opaline 
vial gently, “until time has turned against one, or one 
has had some great grief. Sorrow is not good for the 
complexion.” 

Jeanne laughed. Time was still her gracious ally, 
adding to, not robbing her of charms ; and grief and 
she were not acquainted as yet. 

“What shall I do with it, then .? give it to Aunt Hildah, 
or stopper it tightly and wait for grief ? ” 

Florence’s black eyes were fixed solemnly upon the 
mirror. She was peering into it to note the effect of 
the last coil her deft hands had given the shining rope 
of reddish-brown hair, which Jeanne Lenox was very 
proud of since Randall Mackaye had educated her up 
to an appreciation of Titian’s favorite color. 

“If Miss has a lover, grief will come soon enough ; it 
always does. Ciel! I hope it will not come to you as 
it came to my Lady Eunice.” 


A splendid egotist. 


41 


“ Florence, you are horrid. Your eyes looks as solemn 
as a priest’s at confessional, and your voice is as solemn 
as the penitent’s.” 

“Miss has been to the confessional 
“Never! That was just a fancy sketch. We are 
Episcopalians, Aunt Hildah and I ; that is, if we are any- 
thing. But how did grief come to your Lady Eunice ? 
What did she do that made cosmetilline necessary .? ” 
“My Lady Eunice fell in love with another woman’s 
husband. ” 

“That was very naughty of your Lady Eunice,” 
said Jeanne, plying her chamois brush energetically 
across her pink, polished nails, which shone from the 
recent attack of the manicure. “She deserved to come 
to grief and to cosmetilline prematurely.” 

“Not at all. Miss Jeanne ; my Lady Eunice had noth- 
thing whatever to do with it. ” 

“ Nothing to do with it ? Nothing to do with falling 
in love with a married man ? ” 

“No. It was the work of Destiny. Destiny threw 
her into the way of that other woman’s husband, they 
discovered their affinity for each other, and the conse- 
quences were inevitable.” 

“What were the consequences .? ” said Jeanne, inter- 
estedly. She had no notion of questioning the ethics 
of her maid. 

“When my Lady Eunice heard that her husband’s 
first wife had died in an asylum for the insane, she 
became melancholy, and melancholy always makes 
the complexion yellow. It was then we began to use 
cosmetilline. Poor Lady Eunice ! A less tender nature 


44 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


than hers would have preserved its beauty in spite of 
all.” 

“ Her husband’s first wife ! Then she married the 
man ? ” 

“What did you suspect. Miss Lenox? Of course she 
married him. Had they not been searching for each 
other since ever their souls had been launched into 
space? My Lady Eunice ! What a lovely saint she was ! 
She owed it to my lord not to age so rapidly. My lord 
grew morose when my Lady Eunice faded and pined. 
Small blame to him for seeking amusement away from 
home ! ” 

Plainly, Florence was an excellent companion for 
Jeanne Lenox, young, ardent, untutored ! 

Jeanne’s hair was dressed now, and Florence had 
buttoned the little high-heeled boots about her silken- 
dad ankles before fetching the blue silk and velvet 
costume that they had decided on between them as 
most becoming. Jeanne was distinctly anxious to 
excel herself for this occasion, and to excel everybody 
else, of course. 

“ Florence,” she asked, leaning towards the mirror 
to pat the soft fringe of curls on her forehead into more 
becoming positions, “ you believe in affinities, then, do 
you? Souls’ mates, and all that sort of thing? ” 

“Without doubt. Miss Jeanne. Do not you?” 

“I don’t know yet,” said the girl, emerging with a 
very pink face from the heavy drapery the maid had 
flung skilfully over her head ; ‘ ‘ but I hope fate will nevet 
play me the malicious, trick she played your Lady 
Eunice, and marry my affinity off before we find each 
other.” 


A SPLENDID egotist. 


43 

I hope so, too, Miss Lenox, from my neart ; but if 
she should ” Florence's mouth was too full for utter- 

ance. There were bows and things to be pinned about 
the sweeping draperies, and her mouth was full of sharp 
pins. 

Jeanne finished the sentence for her : 

*‘If she should, Florence, we will fall back on cos- 
metilline. I am glad to know of such a panacea to 
grief." 

She laughed — that easy, insolent laugh which seemed 
forever defying fate to do its worst — the laugh which 
had rasped Marianne Mackaye’s nerves to the utmost. 

A little later she said, regarding her own reflection in 
the mirror with pardonable complacence : 

“You had better call Aunt Hildah, Florence; you know 
she never will omit the ceremony of inspection." 

Florence dropped the plump white arm along which 
she had patiently plied a small silver button-hook to 
the twenty-first button-hole, and gave an audible sniff 
of scorn. 

To her, Miss Hildah Warren's “ ceremony of inspec- 
tion " was little short of an insult. What should a poor, 
lame, sick woman, brought up in the obscure rural 
regions, the dear knew where, know about the proprie- 
ties or the improprieties of a wealthy, fashionable young 
lady's life in the city This to herself. To Jeanne : 

“ I hope you will not allow Miss Warren to make any 
alterations. You are perfect to-night. Miss. I am sure 
your lover " — 

“ Not lover, Florence!" with a swift, angry blush, 
followed by a sweet, pardoning smile. 


44 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


“ — Admirer — friend — affinity, then, will like you best 
just as you are. He is rich, Miss Jeanne ? ” 

“No; a struggling- genius, Florence.” 

“Ah, well, that is a pity. But then. Miss will have 
enough for the two. Now I will go for Miss Warren.” 

‘ ‘ As well fetch in the cat that sits by the kitchen range, 
to criticise,” said Florence to herself, spitefully, as she 
trod the softly carpeted halls with a gliding, noiseless 
step in search of Miss Hildah Warren, Jeanne’s duenna. 

The girl she had left behind her, fully equipped, even 
to her fan, a toy of fine lace and carved pearl sticks, 
stood in front of her mirror engaged in self-contempla- 
tion. There was something deeper than personal vanity 
in the intense gaze of her wide, clear, childlike gray 
eyes. 

“Will he like me best just as I am .? Oh, I hope so, I 
hope so ! I want to be beautiful for him, him only of 
all the world.” 

She turned from the glass quickly as she heard the 
slow, regular thump of Miss Hildah’s cane in the cor- 
ridor, just outside her door. 

“How do I look, auntie .? ” 

She spread her gloved arms and hands outward, giving 
he full, graceful contour of her perfect figure the advan- 
tage of an unbroken line. Her cheeks were aflame with 
excitement. 

Miss Hildah’s eyes travelled from the crown of her 
shining head to the tips of her little boots. 

“You are altogether too young and too handsome to 
be allowed such large liberty. No one at all to — Oh, 
my dear child ! ” 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


45 

“ ‘ No one at all ’ to do what ? I have you and Flor- 
ence. ’’ 

“ Florence certainly knows how to dress you. But 

I ” Miss Hildah sighed wearily. “Oh, Jeanne, I 

have been young and admired myself, in my time. I 
know what the temptations of this gay world are.” 

Florence, straightening the things on the disordered 
toilet table, elevated her thin shoulders in a French shrug 
of incredulity. Jeanne made a little moue. 

“ Don’t moralize. Aunt Hildah ; I’m not dressed fora 
lecture. I am going to enjoy myself thoroughly to- 
night. It is only a quiet little dinner at Mrs. Rockwood’s. 
Florence has been saying all sorts of nice things to me, 
and I know when Florence approves I must be looking 
well. So don’t spoil it all.” 

“ Miss is perfect, cesoir” Florence murmured, enthu- 
siastically. 

‘ • Of course Florence is going with you If it were 
not that my lameness made me so conspicuous in 
company ” 

Jeanne hesitated and blushed. It had seemed a 
simple enough thing a little while before, looking down 
upon Florence, as she knelt before her to button her 
boots, to impart the information that she was going to 
pick up Mr. Mackaye on her way to Mrs. Rockwood’s. 
It seemed a harder thing to say it to her aunt. “Aunt 
Hildah has such a trying way of stickling over small 
points of etiquette.” 

“Miss Warren is antique — obsolete,” Florence had 
more than once daringly affirmed in Jeanne’s presence. 

“Of course I go with Miss Jeanne,” said Florence, 
sweeping the girl’s flushed face with a warning glance, 


46 


A' SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


before letting her grave black eyes rest in cold surprise 
on Miss Warren's peevish countenance. 

“That, then, makes it all right," said Miss Hildah, 
struggling up from the low easy-chair by the aid of her 
stick; “and, Jeanne, do take notice of young Mrs. 
Verplanck’s dress. She is sure to be there. Mrs. Rock- 
wood never omits her. Mrs. Buckland was here 
yesterday, and she says Mrs. Verplanck’s entire ward- 
robe for this summer was gotten up by Felix, in Paris. 
Find out where the Rockwoods are going this summer. 
We must get out of town " 

“Miss Lenox will be late,” said Florence, coming in 
from a short absence, with her own hat and gloves on ; 
and she looked inexorably at the clock on Jeanne’s 
mantel-shelf. 

“I will find out everything, aunty,” Jeanne said, 
swooping down upon Miss Hildah’s withered cheek 
with a fleeting caress. “Tell papa — oh, I forgot; he 
always goes to the club, Thursdays.” 

She was gone, leaving the dressing-room looking like 
a gilt cage from which some bright-plumaged bird had 
just made its fluttering escape. 

‘^Florence,” Jeanne asked, as her maid placidly 
followed her into the coupe, “how could you tell poor 
old Aunt Hilda such an awful fib .? You know you aer 
not going to Mrs. Rockwood’s with me. I told you I 
had promised Mr. Mackaye to save him that horrid car 
ride.” 

“I think I have not told Miss Warren any untruth. 
I have a sick cousin, who lives on South Fifth Avenue. 
If Miss Jeanne will let me ride so far in the coupe I 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


47 


. will be glad. If she objects, I can go in the stage, or I 
can walk.’’ 

Jeanne laughed indulgently. She began to think she 
had never fully appreciated Florence before then. 

When the coupe stopped in front of the studio build- 
ing, Florence got out on the side next the street, and 
walked rapidly away under the trees in the square ; not 
so far distant, however, but that when Randall Mackaye 
came out, following Jeanne’s be-buttone'd footman, 
she was close enough to form her own astute opinion 
of his personal appearance. 

“He walks like a king, and, del! what a superb 
head ! ” This, as Randall stood for a second with head 
uncovered before her mistress. ‘ ‘ There will be scarcely 
room for the two of them in that cramped coupe ; but 
they will not mind that ! He will not mind, she will 
not mind ; no, not if it entirely crush that lovely 
train. She should have taken the large carriage.” 

Florence’s professional instincts came uppermost, and 
she glowered angrily after the swift-rolling carriage in 
impotent discontent. 

No, they did not mind. Jeanne was absolutely con- 
tent. She was content to occupy the remnant of space 
not needed for Randall’s magnificent proportions. While 
he .? The ease of the nicely poised springs, the smooth, 
noiseless progress of the carriage, the delicate fragrance 
that was part of Jeanne’s refined atmosphere, the 
caressing voice in which she was prattling to him, with 
childlike eagerness, of the veriest nothings, all quite 
filled the measure of his content. 

“Unquestionably,” he said to himself, lending a 
polite ear to Jeanne’s description of a tennis tourna- 


48 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


ment she had attended since last seeing him, “ this is a 
pleasanter way of spending the evening than listening 
to Marianne scold. I am glad she has taken her 
doldrums to Hoboken. Vastly pleasanter ! Poor little 
thing ! ” 

‘ ‘ Poor little thing ! Whom he dedicated that un- 
spoken comment to he scarcely knew himself. Randall 
Mackaye rarely ever marred a positive enjoyment by 
untimely moralizing. 

He was distinctly enjoying himself as he sat by 
Jeanne Lenox in the shining coupe which was conA^ey- 
ing him towards Mrs. Rockwood's in such creditable 
style. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


49 


CHAPTER V. 

Poor little thing ! ” 

He knew distinctly to whom he applied the words a 
few hours later, when Jeanne, having put him down in 
front of the studio building, leaned out of the carriage 
to declare ecstatically that she had had a “perfectly 
lovely time/' 

Florence, gaunt of figure and stealthy of tread, had 
emerged suddenly from under the greenery, made weird 
by the electric lights in the square, and, opening the 
coupe for herself, had taken her place by her mistress' 
side. She was just in time to catch the closing sentences 
of the colloquy, but Florence was an experienced hand 
at piecing odds and ends together. Jeanne was leaning 
towards the sculptor as he made his adieux from the 
carriage block. 

“And when will love's young dream be realized.?" 
Florence heard asked in Jeanne’s eager young voice. 

“Soon, very soon, for you, I hope.” 

“Tease! You know I am talking about the statue. 
You have made me wild with curiosity." 

“Miss Lenox will catch cold. The night air is raw," 
said Florence, in a discreet undertone, from the other 
side of the carriage. 

“Your maid is right," said Randall, composedly; 
I shall I give your driver his orders ? " 


50 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


“ Home,” said Jeanne, drawing her pink, flushed 
face back from the glare of the two big lamps that 
flanked the studio’s entrance door. 

A soft, fluttering sigh fell on Florence’s trained ears, 
then the girl by her side sat as still as if sleep had sud- 
denly overtaken her, bringing love’s young dream in 
its embrace. 

“Miss Lenox has lost her right-hand glove,” said 
Florence, laying a daring finger on her mistress’ wrist. 
The girl’s pulse was beating fast and furiously. Jeanne 
shook the cool, insolent fingers off with an impatient 
motion. 

“The glove is somewhere in the carriage, I suppose. 

I drew it off to locate some hair-pins that were piercing 
my skull.” 

Florence satisfied herself that the glove was not in 
the coupe. 

“ It is a pity to break the pair,” she said, with calm 
insolence. “ Monsieur must have appropriated it. Do 
these men never stop to think of the cost of such a pair 
of gloves ? And your lovely corsage roses, Miss Lenox, 
are a complete wreck. Did I pin them in so carelessly 
as all that .? ” 

Jeanne laughed softly, and the jewels on her bared 
white hand flashed as she laid it on her defrauded 
corsage. 

“ Florence, you are pitiless. Aunt Hildah herself 
could not be any more inquisitorial. Does one ever 
return from an entertainment without being wrecked, as 
you call it, to a certain extent ? I did not lose my roses ; 
I gave them to monsieur. He said the combination of 
tints was perfect. That was a compliment to you. He 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


51 

is going to make a little water-color sketch of them. I 
will have it framed and give it to you — perhaps.” 

“ Miss Lenox is very, very kind.” 

“Kind! To whom?” 

“ Oh, to me, for her ‘perhaps,’ and to monsieur for 
the gift of her roses and — her ungloved hand. ” 

‘ ‘ Florence, you are insufferable I ” 

Perhaps the girl’s fresh beauty, her childish inexperi- 
ence, her motherless condition — something, touched a 
possibly unsullied spot in the Frenchwoman’s seared 
soul, for, with an intensity of voice and manner which 
Jeanne had never before witnessed, she answered 
earnestly : 

“ My young lady, you are very young and very 
ignorant. You have no mother. I know the world. 
I know men. They are all desperately wicked. Be 
careful, that is all.” 

“ Florence, I quite hate you 1 ” 

“I know you do to-night, my young lady.” 

They were at home now. Florence followed the 
flying figure upstairs as soon as she had gathered the 
wraps together and made sure by a thorough search 
that the glove was not in the carriage. Jeanne turned 
sharply on her at the head of the stairs. 

“ I shall not need you to-night, Florence ; go to bed. 
I am going to tell Aunt Hildah all about the dinner and 
Mrs. Verplanck’s dress before I go to my own room.” 

“Miss will want me when she does go to her own 
room. Her bodice laces behind.” 

“No, I shall not want you.” 

Jeanne emphasized this decision with a passionate 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


52 

stamp of her wayward little foot. She could stand 
anything better than contradiction. 

I shall be very angry with you, Florence, if you 
oppose me any further.” 

Florence turned away silently. Jeanne went into 
Miss Hildah’s room, and, seating herself on the foot of 
that lady’s bed, unloosed the flood-gates of gossip, and 
let the inundation submerge them both, to the absolute 
oblivion of the silent, waiting figure which Jeanne felt 
quite sure of finding in her dressing-room, in spite of 
her crisp commands. 

When the Lenox equipage, with its shining panels, 
its high-stepping thoroughbreds, and its glittering har- 
ness, had rolled softly away from him, Randall Mackaye 
had replaced the hat held courteously in his hand while 
Jeanne was in sight, and muttered “ Poor little thing !” 
as above recorded ; and he then turned and gave an 
upward glance toward the windows of his own studio 
in the fourth story of the high building. 

Might not Marianne possibly have returned in his 
absence .? It was quite dark up there. He believed he 
should enjoy his cigar better sitting on one of the 
people’s benches, over there in the square, near the 
fountain, where a meagre stream of Croton water made 
limited excursions into the air, before falling in a thin 
shower upon the assorted lot of lily pads and Egyptian 
lotuses which filled the stone basin. He abhorred 
solitude. 

It was too early for bed, and too late for the theatres. 
That was the worst feature of dinners, unless one had 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


53 

filled out the evening’s programme beforehand, which 
he had not done. 

He had meant to have spent that whole evening with 
Marianne. It was her fault that he was sitting there 
on an iron bench, smoking his cigar, with never a soul 
to exchange a word with, while she was cooling her 
unrighteous wrath in the stuffy little boarding-house in 
Hoboken, that her father called “home” ! 

But it was not of Marianne he was thinking all the 
while he sat there in the square, taking amused note of 
the wasteful energy with which a pair of Teutonic 
citizens were discussing the fluctuating phases of the 
great Emperor’s illness. It was of Jeanne Lenox, who 
had just driven away from him, flushed, excited, happy. 

“What an emotional little thing it is ! ” 

She was safe enough with him, he assured some 
unseen accuser; but in some men’s hands the girl’s 
impetuous, untrained nature might lead her into trouble. 
“As unlike Nan-nan as possible! Wine and ice-water 
are not more unlike. ” 

It was with a distinct sensation of self-approval that 
Mr. Mackaye reviewed the events of the evening. He 
had treated Miss Lenox with really paternal kindness. He 
had made it perfectly clear to her, or at least tried to 
do so, that he was wedded, “indissolubly wedded,” as 
he had told her, to the most exacting of all mistresses. 
Art. 

I shall not go to see her, he virtuously resolved ; not 
even if, as she declares she means to make him do, her 
father should call in person. The thing will die out of 
itself. Egad, though, what a business card it would 
be to have Jerome Lenox call in person 1 It would 


54 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


give me a regular boom. His daughter declared he 
was quite an art critic. Perhaps he might otfer a fancy- 
price for the statue. Perhaps, even, admission to the 
Union League might come through acquaintance with 
Jerome Lenox. 

Two intrusive faces had thrust themselves by turns 
into his reverie : one, that of a pale, classic, offended 
Juno; the other, a girl’s face, flushed, happy, love- 
lighted ! The Egotist put them both away from him 
to revel in a delightful vision of himself, enjoying all 
the luxurious liberty and sumptuous idleness of club- 
life at the League. 

‘^Egad ! ” — he threw the stump of his smoked-out cigar 
energetically upon the asphalt pavement at his feet — “ I 
never was intended for the seamy side of life. Fate 
played me a scurvy trick when she sent me adrift in the 
world to make my own living."' 

He leaned back and stretched his long legs luxuri- 
ously. He still felt a trifle cramped from his drive in 
Jeanne's little coupe. He took his hat off and held it 
in his hand to let the cool night air fan his forehead. 
His head ached slightly. It had been “a trying day," 
he told himself 

A woman, a tired, shabby-looking woman, hurry- 
ing by with a dressmaker’s big box bumping awkward- 
ly against her knees, stopped to glance at him. His 
was not the sort of figure one generally encountered 
sitting on the benches in Washington Square between 
the hours of ten and eleve 

The electric light fell full upon the snowy expanse of 
bosom that went with his dinner dress. On the bench 
by him lay a big bunch of fading roses. With his 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


55 

long, firm fingers he was restlessly caressing his long 
side- whiskers. The rest of his face was clean shaven. 
A handsome, bright face at all times, notwithstanding 
a certain shade of restless dissatisfaction that marred its 
serenity. 

“It's Ran, as sure’s you’re born. There ain’t but one 
Randall Mackaye in this world. The Lord couldn’t 
afford to make a pair of him. ” 

The shabby woman scurried on out of sight, with a 
mirthless sort of a laugh. She had halted for scarcely a 
half-second. She made no sign of recognition. As for 
him he had not even noticed her slight halt, nor the 
hunger in her faded blue eyes. 

The tower clock over in Sixth Avenue was striking 
eleven when the sculptor mounted the stairs to the 
studio in the fourth story. He was going back to his 
rooms very reluctantly. The studio was dark but for 
the moon-like radiance flung into it, across the tree tops, 
from the tall electric lights in the square. 

The veiled statue gleamed whitely in the obscurity. 
There was a pretty antique lamp, which Marianne had 
picked up at an auction sale, hanging just over it. This 
Randall applied a match to, and by its soft, silvery light 
he drew aside the shroud from his masterpiece. 

He stood before it a long time, with his arms folded 
across his broad chest. Its pure, chaste beauty seemed 
that night a thing which he had had no hand in creat- 
ing. It was almost as if Marianne herself was there 
before him, cold, distant, beautiful. Oh, so beautiful, 
so majestic in her calm disdain of the petty selfishness 
that had filled his day ! 

“You will come back to me, ma belle. Yes, you 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


5 ^ 

will come back to me. Freely and of your own accord 
you left me. Freely and of your own accord you must 
come back to me. I shall not woo you back. That 
would be to cry peccavi Love’s young dream is not 
quite over yet, for — you — ma belle” 

Another second, only, he stood there in silent con- 
templation of the beautiful, still, white face before him. 

The antique lamp overhead, swaying gently by its 
silver chains, cast flickering shadows over the sculp- 
tured features with lifelike effect. It was almost as if 
Marianne herself had turned her regal head away from 
him, in frowning rebuke of his presumption. 

With a short, quick sigh, born rather of a feeling of 
physical fatigue and general dissatisfaction with the 
turn things had taken than any shamed sense of per- 
sonal wrong-doing, the Egotist drew the shroud once 
more over his masterpiece and turned away in the di- 
rection of his bedroom. 

At the moment he laid his head on the pillow he re- 
membered that he had left Jeanne Lenox’s roses out 
yonder on the iron bench in Washington Square. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


57 


CHAPTER VI. 

All an inexperienced girl's abandonment to the sweet 
tumult of a first passion ; all the fervid imaginings that 
can find nourishment in a man's bold glance and mean- 
ingless adulation ; all the intoxicated flights of fancy 
and the ecstacy of foundationless hopes which go to 
make of love's young dream a somewhat unrestful 
experience, beset Jeanne's soul that night and drove 
sleep from her pillow, with no better final result than 
the prosaic resolution to breakfast with her father. 

“I will take breakfast with father and talk to him 
about it. Now I’ll count a thousand and go to sleep. I 
will not think another thought. ’’ 

Whether she kept that resolution, formed about three 
o'clock A. M. , no one knows ; but she did keep the one 
to breakfast with her father. Breakfasting with her 
father held a deep significance always, both for Mr. 
Jerome Lenox and the young lady herself. Mr. Lenox 
laid down his Herald with a smile of pleased surprise as 
she .fluttered' into his presence, with a rustle of crisp 
lawn drapery, with little pennons of gay ribbons afloat 
from various points. The somewhat sombre magnifi- 
cence of the dining-room was brightened by her com- 
ing. It was as if a bunch of fragrant flowers had been 
brought in. Perching on the arm of her father's chair, 
like some bird of gay plumage, she twined her cool. 


A SPLENDID egotist. 


58 

soft arms around his neck to make the important an- 
nouncement : 

“ I got up two hours earlier on purpose to breakfast 
with you, you very dear, handsome, big, old papa. 
Express your gratitude fittingly.'" 

Mr. Lenox drew her round in front of him and held 
her at arm’s length to survey her critically, laughed 
indulgently, and drew her caressingly within kissing 
range. 

“That means no surplus in the treasury. It isn’t 
every woman that can dare the morning’s glare as well 
as you can, Jeanne. Is it that white frock.? ” 

“I went to bed last night like a Christian. My roses 
are the reward of virtue. But I have not heard you say 
you will be glad to have me pour out your cocoa yet ; ” 
she moved away from him ' and took her place behind 
the tray; “and I don’t think it is at all nice of you, 

« papa, to suppose that I want money every time I come 
near you.” 

“ No .? Why, I thought that was being just as nice as 
possible. ” 

. “Money is not everything,” said Jeanne, virtuously. 

“No, not everything. ” By implication of emphasis 
the broker left it to be understood that it was very 
nearly everything. 

“Papa, do you love art.?” 

Jeanne asked this with sudden irrelevance, her big 
eyes fixed gravely on his face. Her cheeks were aflame, 
and her heart was thumping so ferociously against her 
bodice that the knot of ribbons pinned at its open neck 
fluttered distressfully. 

‘ ‘ Bless my soul ! A new departure ? The aesthetic 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


$9 

this time. Did my Jeanne curtail her morning nap 
exclusively to discuss art with her Wall Street bear .? ” 

“ I only call you that when you are ugly and cross. 
You look nice this morning, and I adore you.” 

“Thanks. It is no small matter to have a handsome 
woman of brains and perspicuity tell one he is adora- 
ble, especially when one’s mouth is full of buttered toast 
Jeanne, I am afraid you are reduced to actual penury. 
Let me see your check-book.” 

Jeanne laughed, and leaving the tray came over once 
more to perch on the arm of his chair, where her mouth 
was in close proximity to his ear, but her face was not 
in full view of those clear, steady, penetrating gray 
eyes of his. 

“ Now, father, don’t tease. I have a favor to ask of 
you, and you must promise beforehand to grant it” 

“ Reasonable, as usual. But as it is entirely imma- 
terial whether I promise beforehand or simply do your 
royal highness’s bidding with my customary unques- 
tioning docility, heave ahead, my daughter.” 

“ Don’t be slangy, dear. Slang doesn’t become your 
style of beauty. You look like a Roman senator, you 
know, minus the toga. Now, papa, you do love art ; 
don’t deny it ” 

“I haven’t the slightest intention of doing so ; but, 
Jeanne, would you mind combing my hair with just 
one or two fingers, instead of all ten at once ? I am 
afraid I won’t have time to revisit my dressing-room 
before going down-town. ” 

Jeanne transferred her restless little fingers from the 
short, thick, iron-gray locks of hair, which she had been 


6o 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


coaxing into a less rigid attitude about her father’s tem- 
ples, to the sash ends about her own trim waist. 

“And I have heard you say, plenty of times, that 
you thought our wealthy men had better spend more 
money encouraging native talent rather than in purchas- 
ing old-world pictures at such reckless prices. Don’t 
deny it, papa. ” 

“Well!” combatively, “and I stick to it. That’s 
sound common-sense, whether it’s art logic or not.” 

“ It is both,” said Jeanne, with a sagacious nod of 
her pretty head. 

“Both? And that from you? Why you’ve always 
fought like a little tigress for the Old Masters, and the 
Renaissance, and the dear knows what art bosh besides.” 

“I have changed my mind,” said Jeanne, com- 
posedly. 

‘ ‘ Oh 1 Given up the foreigners ? ” 

“Yes, and am going to devote myself to the en- 
couragement of native talent. ” 

Mr. Lenox smiled surreptitiously into his cocoa cup. 
He had views of his own touching Jeanne’s sudden 
arousement in favor of native talent, which it would 
never do to express in words. Jeanne was given to 
“fads,” which she held up to the world for convictions 
with fierce but transient zeal. However, it was alto- 
gether too rare and sweet a thing to have her perched 
there on the arm of his chair, infusing her own fresh, 
pure personality into his day’s beginning, for him to 
risk any brutal criticism on her inconsistency. 

“ Well, dear?” 

He was infinitely patient with her, this great, big, 
broad-chested, clear-headed man, who spent his days 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


6l 


down among the money-makers, with always the under- 
thought of Jeanne and Jeanne’s good abiding with 
him. “ It is for Jeanne; all for Jeanne; my pretty, 
pretty, Jeanne.” She was all he had to care for, you 
see, and to be foolish about. 

“Well, father” — her voice suddenly became intense 
in its pleading tones — “I want very, very much to have 
you prove how much of all you have said about native 
talent meant anything. ” 

‘ ‘ Endowment for League ? — art class ? — something of 
that sort ? ” 

“No, papa, nothing on so grand a scale. I am 
modest, you see. I just want you to be good to and 
help along one solitary, deserving straggler.” 

“Woman.?” 

“No, a man; a young man that I met last night 
at Mrs. Rockwood’s. ” 

“For the first time ? ” 

“Oh dear, no. Everybody that is anybody has 
invited Mr. Mackaye about this winter and spring ; one 
meets him everywhere. Mrs. Rockwood raves over 
him. He was out at the Fosters a day or two ago.” 

“That doesn’t look like starvation. The Fosters 
don’t take kindly to meritorious mendicants.” 

“No, oh no ; neither do I. I have no faith in out-at- 
elbows talent. Mr. Mackaye is not out-at-elbows, nor 
does he eat his dinner as if he only got one a month. 
He dresses nicely, and looks at home everywhere. No 
one is ashamed to have Mr. Mackaye come to them. 
He is the thing this winter.” 

“A sort of woman’s pet.” 

“Indeed, nothing of the sort, father. Of course, if he 


62 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


expects to get on here, he must make himself known 
personally. And the women are the only medium open 
to him at present. He can’t advertise himself like a 
quack medicine or a patent shoe polish, papa. ” 

“ Not well. But what is he about, and what do you 
want me to do about him .? ” 

“ I will tell you,” said Jeanne, speaking earnestly 
and rapidly, perhaps out of consideration for the rest- 
less glance her father cast towards the mantel clock, 
perhaps from sheer nervousness. “ He is from way up 
somewhere in Vermont. Mrs. Rockwood, you know, 
can always find out more than anybody else can. She 
says he has painted portraits and all sorts of pictures, to 
support himself while at work upon his real life-work, 
sculpture. He tells her — you know everybody confides 
in Mrs. Rockwood — that he has a piece of sculpture in 
an unfinished condition which he is confident will meet 
with the plaudits of discriminating art critics all over 
the world, when put on exhibition. He has been a long 
time at it, and Mrs. Rockwood says that, although, of 
course, he don’t tell her so, she imagines he is so poor 
that he has to stop work on his masterpiece in order to 
make enough money to pay his room rent and feed 
himself. Horrible, isn’t it, papa ? ” 

“What, Jeanne ? — the masterpiece or the man } ” 
“That such a genius should have to think about room 
rent and baker’s bills and — and — things ! ” 

“Inconvenient, but not exactly horrible. And you 
want me — to — ” 

“Satisfy yourself that this young sculptor is really 
deserving, and — then — ” 

“Well— then?” 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


63 

“ Do for him, father, Avhat you would like some other 
man to do for — Len ; our Len, who is wandering no 
one knows where." 

Mr. Lenox rose abruptly from the table. So abruptly, 
that Jeanne could scarcely decide whether she had made 
a mistake in mentioning her brother's name or not. She 
looked after her father anxiously, standing there with 
her pretty hands clasped about the high back of the 
chair he had just vacated. That he was not very angry 
with her she felt quite sure when he came back to her 
from a short excursion into the library to ask : 

“ Where does your beggar student hold forth, 
Jeanne .? " 

“ He is neither a beggar nor a student," said Jeanne, 
in hot resentment. 

^‘Your prodigy, then." 

Nor that." 

“The estimable young gentleman, then, whom, to 
pleasure her royal highness, I suppose I must look up. " 

Jeanne rewarded him with an ecstatic little hug and 
a shower of kisses, between which she managed to 
impress upon his intelligence the exact location of the 
studio building. 

As Mr. Lenox entered the carriage which had been 
waiting for him long enough to excite his stolid coach- 
man to a pitch of mild but mute speculation, it occurred 
to him to congratulate himself on the possession of such 
a daughter. 

A good-hearted little thing ! What other girl of her 
set, with countless calls upon her time and thoughts, 
would even have remembered Mrs. Rockwood's needy 
protege ? If the fellow should prove himself really pos- 


64 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


sessed of talent, Jeanne should find that all her father's 
utterances about fostering native talent had not been 
mere utterances. 

He was fully prepared to patronize Mr. Mackaye 
when, on his homeward drive from the office that after- 
noon, he ordered his coachman round by the studio 
building. 

He entered the studio in the fourth story at a most 
auspicious moment for the sculptor. 

With his working blouse on, and his thick mass of 
brown hair covered by the silk skull-cap which he 
always wore when using the chisel, Randall was stand- 
ing in front of his masterpiece, flushed from exercise, 
grave, alert, interested — a perfect picture of energetic 
absorption in his calling. 


^ SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


^>5 


CHAPTER VIE 

The man of money advanced upon the man of ideas 
with the easy assurance of a personage whom even 
Fate had never ventured to rebuff. 

“This looks like business,” Jeannes father said, 
holding his tall silk hat in one hand, while he extended 
the other to the sculptor with the utmost cordiality. 
“My name is Lenox, sir; Jerome Lenox. Happy to 
make your acquaintance.” 

Randall had turned at the sound of advancing foot- 
steps, and now flushed to the brim of his silken cap with 
a sort of guilty confusion, which Mr. Lenox mistook for 
natural and becoming modesty in a struggling, poor 
artist. Without being in any sense of the wqrd purse- 
proud, this successful man from Wall Street never 
pretended to undervalue his possessions. Money was 
power. RandalPs embarrassment only made Mr. Lenox 
the more affable and reassuring; more so, perhaps, 
than he would have been could he have suspected that, 
after that momentary start of confusion, the sculptor 
was occupying himself mentally in “summing up” 
Jerome Lenox, of whom, of course, he had heard much 
and often, even before Jeanne’s appearance on his 
horizon. 

“So, that was Jeanne Lenox's father ! A handsome, 
cordial, courteous gentleman. Shrewd enough, doubt- 


66 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


less, in his own line, but as helpless and ignorant as a 
child, take him out of Wall Street. Especially powerless 
where his womankind were concerned. Not so much 
natural deficiency,” Randall summed up, finally, “as 
habitual absorption in one set of ideas. ” 

All this while he was laying aside his chisel and 
mallet, and divesting himself of his working cap. Then 
he rolled the big arm-chair up in front of the statue and 
begged Mr. Lenox to be seated. 

“I have often heard of you, of course, sir — who has 
not.? — and I am truly grateful for this call.” 

Mr. Lenox waved the compliment aside with his 
large, white, well-kept left hand ; with his right he was 
adjusting his gold-rimmed eye-glass on his nose. Be- 
fore matters went any farther he must decide for him- 
self whether Jeanne’s judgment had been warped by 
the fellow’s good looks, and her good little heart touched 
by the story of his struggles, or whether there was any 
real talent here to be fostered. 

“Do you know, sir,” the sculptor went on, some- 
what nervously, “people judge so much by appear- 
ances, that merely this call from you is enough to send 
me several rounds up the ladder. ” 

It was not in the best taste, but he seemed laboring 
under a necessity for utterance. It mattered little what 
he said. Mr. Mackaye’s instincts were not always the 
very finest. 

Mr. Lenox laughed leniently but abstractedly. His 
eyes were fixed on the statue. It showed no mean 
order of talent. Jeanne was right. The fellow ought 
to be encouraged. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he 
finally turned his gaze from the statue to its maker. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


67 

“It must be a joy/’ he said, “to see a thing like 
that growing under your hand. Egad, it’s fine enough 
to make a fellow repeat Pygmalion’s experience. I 
believe that was the fellow that fell in love with his 
own job, eh } I’m not strong on mythology. ” 

The sculptor made a restless movement. It had 
never before occurred to him that he should find it dis- 
tasteful to have men criticise his masterpiece. “What 
an infernal idiot I am,” he was saying severely of him- 
self at the very moment Mr. Lenox was accepting his 
civil silence as an intimation of crudeness on his part. 
He good-naturedly admitted as much. 

“I’m not going to make an ass of myself by attempt- 
ing art criticism. It takes Jeanne to talk it by the yard 
without understanding a word of it. I’m simply an 
ignorant worshipper at the shrine of the beautiful. 
Now that,” pointing his glasses at the statue, “strikes 
me as being very beautiful, and I’m proud to think it’s 
the work of native genius, sir.” 

Randall bowed his acknowledgments becomingly. 

“I am an American, sir, to the backbone. First, 
last, and always an American ; and I believe in spending 
American money on American artists. Why should we 
fill our parlors, our galleries, our museums with big 
canvases simply because some foreigner with an out- 
landish name painted them } ” 

Mackaye was by nature too indolent a man to fight 
for an abstract matter of justice. The old masters must 
look out for themselves. His hands were too full for 
championship, so he supposed it was “because it is 
fashionable.” 

“But I am not fashionable,” Mr. Lenox returned. 


68 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


vehemently. “No, sir. Egad, I never was; and, 
thank heaven ! when Mrs. Lenox lived, she was not 
fashionable. Miss Lenox — you know my daughter } ” 

Randall met this sudden question with red cheeks 
and a stammering “Yes.'’ 

“You are too modest by half, sir,” said Jeanne’s father, 
somewhat inconsequently. “You must get over that 
trick of blushing if you want people to recognize you 
as a figure in the world. Well, sir, as I was about to 
say, my Jeanne — she’s all I’ve got left — of course she’s 
spoiled a little. She plays at fashionable life at a tre- 
mendous pace. But Jeanne’s sound to the core. She 
never runs after a celebrity because he is a celebrity. 
He’s got to show his grit. Now, you know some of 
our New York women just naturally make fools of 
themselves over you fellows. No offense. I mean 
women in the upper strata, who ought to have more 
sense.” 

Randall admitted, with a sort of proud humility, that 
his acquaintance with the “upper strata” was very 
limited. 

“Yes, of course; you’re a new-comer. Your first 
year here, 1 believe, Jeanne told me. But you’ve made 
some headway with nice people, I believe. Jeanne 
tells me she met you at the Rockwoods’ and heard of 
you at the Fosters’. The Fosters are rather offish as a 
rule.” 

Randall admitted, with his handsome head held well 
in the air, that he had had considerable kindness shown 
him since his Psyche, “a mere trifle,” had been put on 
exhibition at the Academy. 

“ Yes, yes.” 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 69 

The Wall Street man was again studying the statue 
before him with absorbed interest. 

“ That’s going to be a grand thing when it’s 
finished.” 

The sculptor sighed audibly. He was thinking of his 
wife’s impatient strictures on his indolence. 

“Yes,” he said, aloud, ^^whcn it is finished.” 

“ You must have had a superb model for it. Egad, 
I’d like to see something half that fine in flesh and 
blood. Jeanne would stand a good chance for a step- 
mother.” 

To this Randall found no reply. The interview was 
beginning to halt perceptibly. Mr. Lenox showed 
visible signs of embarrassment. He had come there 
with the avowed purpose of helping forward this man’s 
interests in some fashion, but he had not found things 
exactly as he had anticipated. 

There was a certain self-sufficient look about the man 
which discountenanced any open offer of assistance. 
And his surroundings were as far removed from abject 
poverty as they were from luxury. To pull out his 
cheque-book and offer money to this “struggling 
genius,” who carried himself so imperially, would really 
be brutal. The fellow might return insult for insult. 
Then Jeanne would call him a bungler. 

It was plain to be seen that Jerome Lenox, one of 
the most imposing figures on Wall Street, stood shame- 
fully in awe of his Jeanne. 

This was a case calling for considerable finesse, but 
he was too busy a man to be running after this young 
sculptor every da)^ He would study him out in his 
own way, on his own ground. 


70 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


All this passed through the broker’s mind while 
Randall, in answer to a leading question from him, was 
discoursing with keen sarcasm on the statuary con- 
tained in a certain up-town museum. 

Jerome Lenox sat with his head resting luxuriously 
on the velvet head-rest Marianne had contrived out of 
an old bonnet and some bits of ribbon, his fine, 
honest eyes placidly scanning Randall’s intelligent 
features as they kindled with the enthusiasm of his 
utterances. Mackaye always talked well and lucidly 
about his chosen line of work. It required no physical 
effort to talk art. Perhaps, if it had, Jeanne’s father 
would have gone away with no very decided convic- 
tions touching Jeanne’s protege, as he mentally cata- 
logued the sculptor. 

“You’ve really given me a delightful hour, sir, 
delightful. I feel as if I had learned something from 
you. I do, egad ! and we must see more of each other. 
By-the-way, have you any engagement for to-morrow 
night .? ” 

Randall examined his memoranda with the air of a 
man whose engagements were altogether too numerous 
to be entrusted to memory. He found he had an 
engagement for to-morrow night. 

He would not throw himself at Lenox’s head. More- 
over, it was just possible that by the next night 
Marianne would be coming back in restored good- 
humor. 

‘ ‘ Thursday then .? ” 

He hesitated, only a second. That second was long 
enough for him to silence a conscience which was 
quite used to having its better dictates set aside. Why 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


71 

should he deny himself the substantial benefits of this 
man's friendship because of a silly girl’s foolish fancy ? 

“No, I have no engagement for Thursday." 

“Well, then," said Mr. Lenox, cordially, “put us 
down for a quiet family dinner on Thursday. Six 
sharp. I want you to overhaul my picture-gallery and 
give me some advice about it. Jeanne declares it 
makes her blush. You see, Jeanne goes about a good 
deal and picks up no end of amateur twaddle that 
passes for art gospel with her. We both need an intel- 
ligent interpreter. You’ll be doing a good work by 
taking the old gallery in hand. 

They were walking along the corridor of the building 
towards the elevator, which was coming up as they 
reached its door. They were a handsome pair, as they 
stood there, Randall in his shabby working suit, and 
Jeanne's father in the studied elegance that always 
characterized his appearance. 

He extended his hand for a friendly farewell clasp. 

“We will look for you now, positively." 

“ I shall certainly do myself the honor," said Randall, 
stepping back from the opening door of the elevator to 
allow an old man ingress into the corridor. 

The man who stepped out of the elevator presented 
the sharpest possible contrast to the man who stepped 
into it and was borne swiftly downward before Ran- 
dall had greeted the new-comer. 

In point of years, perhaps, there Avas very little mar- 
gin, but this man was bent in form, wrinkled of brow, 
careworn of aspect generally, and held in his hand an 
excessively rusty black hat. 

“Well, Ran.? " 


72 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


“ How’re you, Mr. Grayson.? I didn’t expect to see 
you over during this infernally hot spell.” 

It was Randall’s father-in-law, and he led the way 
back to the studio in a curious frame of mind. 

“ It is a hot day,” said the old portrait-painter, “but 
if I remember right you generally manage to keep pretty 
cool up here.” 

“ Yes, there’s almost always a breeze up here. We’re 
so high up, you see. ” 

He would be pleasant, he said, virtuously, to him- 
self, as long as the old man confined himself to im- 
personal matters ; but, if he had come there to meddle 
between man and wife, he would soon send him about 
his business. 

Up to the present time the relations between the old 
portrait-painter (whose shabbiness and feebleness ap- 
peared to have been accentuated by Mr. Lenox’s elegance 
and superb physique) and his ambitious son-in-law had 
been pleasant. 

Randall had not left the past sufficiently far behind 
him to have entirely lost sight of a certain bleak 
morning in November, when he had presented himself 
before Marianne’s father, in a very threadbare suit of 
clothes, and told him brusquely he wanted to become a 
portrait-painter, for which he could pay a little. 

The old man had smiled into the eager boy face, and 
begun questioning him closely. The result had been 
favorable to the ambitious lad. To the slow-stepping 
old man by his side, conscience reminded him that day 
that he owed all he had accomplished up to that time, 
and all he hoped to do in the future. This forced re- 
trospection made him kind. He pushed the big arm- 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


73 

chair, that had just been vacated by the millionaire, 
closer to the open window. 

“Sit down there, Mr. Grayson, and let me have your 
hat" 

“ How is it getting on.? " the old man asked, fixing 
his keen glance on the statue. 

There had been an It for them all three — Marianne, 
Randall, and himself — for a long time, now. 

“ Slowly," Randall answered, with peevish veracity. 
“ Tve been a lazy hound this summer. It’s the air, I 
think. But I’m going to do better. I’ve been hard at 
work all day. What do you think of it .? Come, now, 
give me an old-time criticism. I think I should be the 
better for a regular quiz. " 

The old man should see, he resolved, that he did not 
include him among his domestic troubles. 

Master and pupil were once more on the old terms. 
Randall had always been a source of satisfaction to his 
teacher. He was ambitious, talented, eager. It had been 
months since Mr. Grayson had seen the statue they all 
expected so much of. Before he was well aware of it 
himself he was fairly launched into an exhaustive criti- 
cism of Randall’s work. He wound up his lecture with 
a tired sigh and a gentle smile. 

“There! Do you suppose I braved this heat just 
for the pleasure of snubbing your new-fangled methods, 
sir ? " 

“You will stay to dinner?" said Randall, looking 
kindly down at the thin, worn face of his master. 

“ Yes, if Nan-nan will give me some." 

“Marianne?" 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


74 

There was such a strange ring of surprise in Randall’s 
voice that the old man looked up at him anxiously. 

“She isn’t ill } ” 

“She is not here.” 

“Not here .? ” 

“No. I thought all this while she was with you.” 

“ With me ! Why should she be with me.^* ” 

After all, then, the unpleasant task of explanation was 
laid on him ! He told Marianne’s father all there was 
to tell as briefly as possible. He made a strenuous 
effort at impartiality, which was creditable to him as 
far as it went, but self-blame was not much in Randall 
Mackaye’s line. 

Marianne’s father heard him through with pathetic 
patience. His gray head moving restlessly to and fro, 
as he looked about on the room his child had made 
pretty. His long, thin hands were clasped firmly across 
the top of his walking-stick. 

“Of course she will come back to me,” said Randall, 
with nervous arrogance. “She left me in unreasonable 
pique, and her own good sense will show her who is to 
blame. She is amply able to care for herself for a few 
days. But why did she not go to you .? ” 

“ Because,” said the old man, rising and expanding 
with a certain moral majesty, “she would not have 
been the Marianne I know if she had come home 
whimpering with a tale against her husband. ” 

He took up his shabby hat and moved towards the 
door. Randall intercepted him : 

“You are not going without a bite of something? ” 
Then, falling back before the calm scorn in the keen old 


A SPLEJVDID EGOTIST. 


75 

eyes, he asked nervously: “Where are you going? 
What are you going to do ? ” 

“ I am going to look for my daughter.” The portrait- 
painter waved him imperiously out of his path. “I 
never knew her do an unconsidered thing in all her 
life — unless — indeed — it was marrying you.” 

■ With this parting shaft he passed out into the corri- 
dor. Randall did not walk with him to the elevator. 
It was never necessary, and to-day it would not be 
pleasant. 

He paced the floor restlessly for a few moments, the 
trend of his thoughts escaping him in disjointed words 
and sentences : ‘ ‘ Where in thunder is Marianne if not in 
Hoboken ?, How long is she likely to keep this infernal 
nonsense up ? ” Then — with a sigh, a long-drawn sigh 
of futile regret — “If I’d only waited ! — two little years 
longer — That would have been a father-in-law one 
could have used ! ” 


76 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

It was a queer chance that had sent the old Hoboken 
portrait-painter across the river on one of his rare visits 
to “ Nan-nan '' that particular morning ! — almost a mali- 
cious chance ! If he had staid quietly at home, which, 
indeed, was precisely the thing he did for about three 
hundred days of the year, permitting himself the most 
diluted sorts of dissipation on the odd sixty-five, he 
would have gone to his supper that night better in- 
formed and less miserable. As it was, he turned away 
from the studio, his gentle soul full to the brim of a sort 
of impotent fury, which he essayed to work off by rush- 
ing aimlessly from one picture-gallery to the other, 
until night overtook him still wandering among the 
hurrying, rushing crowds, not one individual of whom, 
he reflected, with futile querulousness, cared a rush 
for his fatigue, his loneliness, his pained perplexity 
concerning “Nan-nan’s” whereabouts. 

“I’ll make a night of it,” he said, with dismal iieck- 
lessness. “Some supper, and then the theatre. I can 
think it out better here than over yonder.” 

He shrank unaccountably from going back over the 
river. “ Marianne is on this side of it.” Somewhere 
in that wilderness of roofs his girl was hiding her 
trouble from him. There was a little Italian restaurant 
in Third Avenue where he and “Nan-nan ” had taken 
many a merry meal together when they were just living 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


77 


for each other alone, and would come over to the city 
to see Irving and Terry o- hear Patti. Only the very 
best, in the way of entertainment, had ever been good 
enough for him and “ Nan-nan.” Perhaps she v/ould 
go to Moretti’s for her meals. She must eat. No 
matter how wretched she was, she must eat. 

He hurried towards the little eating-house, and, estab- 
lishing himself at one of the red cherry-wood tables 
where he must see everyone that came in, absently gave 
his order, and then sat there patiently waiting for that 
which never came. 

His half-dozen fried oysters came, and he ate them 
slowly. Then he sat there moving the catsups and the 
sauces and the pepper and vinegar bottles hither and 
thither, now arranging them in single file along the 
bare, polished surface of the table, now shoving them 
impatiently into a heap at one end, until it was useless 
to remain any longer. 

It was nearly eight o’clock, and his Nan-nan would 
never come alone to a public eating-house so late as 
that. 

“ They made a mistake, a big mistake ; I knew it, 
I knew it. I told them so beforehand.” 

That was the burden of his thoughts as he rose finally, 
and, reaching up to the rack over the table for his shabby 
hat, he put it on and went out into the glittering street 
once more, slowly and reluctantly. 

It had been the burden of his thoughts all day long, 
ever since Randall had made his one-sided statement. 
It was the burden of his thoughts as he sat in the 
crowded theatre looking unsmilingly on at the play 
which was provoking billows of mirth all about him. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


78 

It was the burden of his thoughts as, late at night, with 
a guilty sense of wrong-doing, born of his regular and 
blameless life, he fitted the latch-key into the outer door 
of his Hoboken boarding-house and groped his way 
upstairs through the darkened hall. 

He felt for the handle of his own door and opened it 
cautiously, exclaimed “God bless my soul!” closed 
the door eagerly behind him, and rushed tumultuously 
upon — Marianne. 

She \.;'as sitting by the table sewing. The gas was 
burning at full-cock, and all around about her piles of 
his \rearing apparel lay in confused heaps. 

“ Nan-nan I ” 

‘ You naughty papa ! Here IVe been spending the 
entire day waiting and waiting to see you, and now 
you’ve got to shelter me for the night.” 

He looked at her in silent perplexity. She was 
very pale, but absolutely serene — outwardly, at least. 
Her grave eyes met his unflinchingly. 

“I — I — went over to see you this morning, daughter.” 
The agitation was all on his side. 

“So I supposed.” She pushed a vase containing the 
big bunch of carnations she had brought with her farther 
towards the centre of the table with a little restless 
movement. ‘‘You saw Randall, of course ?” 

“Yes, I saw him. He thought you were with me 
all this time. Why did you give me such a fright, Nan- 
nan .? And what have you kicked up such a devil of a 
mess for ? ” 

She looked so placid that he could not help indulging 
himself in one little spurt of wrath. With the average 
man, unreasoning anger is the usual revulsion from 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


79 

causeless anxiety. She had seated herself and resumed 
work on the frayed cuffs of one of his shirts. 

“I never meant to give you a fright, father. I 
would not have done such a thing, and you know it. It 
was just a chance, an odd one too, that took you to 
town this morning. I only left — the — my husband two 
days ago. ’' 

“ But you are going back to hirh .? ” 

“No.” 

She stopped to bite her thread off before emitting 
that monosyllable. Her teeth remained clinched tightly 
afterwards. 

“I don’t mean immediately,” Mr. Grayson added, 
hastily. “Stay here until you get over your huff, of 
course. You are always welcome, dear.” 

There was something in the set, pale face before him 
that dictated a temporizing policy. She raised her eyes 
coldly to meet his. 

“I am not in any ‘huff,’ father. Randall and I made 
a mistake. You know you said we were about to do it 
before the ceremony was performed.” 

“Yes, yes; but that’s all past and done with. You 
blundered, but you can’t unblunder.” 

She was looking away from him now, pulling the 
carnations to pieces with merciless fingers, and scatter- 
ing their crimson petals on the white linen in her lap. 

“Father, don’t you think Mr. Mackaye has very 
decided talent .? ” she asked, suddenly. 

“Marked, marked,” said the old man, enthusiasti- 
cally. His spirits were rising. Plainly it was nothing 
but a woman’s petulant outbreak, and by a little timely 
exaltation of Randall he might turn the tide once more 


8o 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


in favor of peace and amity. “There’s nothing that 
fellow couldn’t do, if he’d only apply himself. 
Ran’s a luxurious dog. He likes things to be kept 
smooth and easy, you know. He’s always at his best 
when he’s had a good big dose of flattery, judiciously 
administered. ” 

He went blundering on. If he could only show 
Nan-nan these little harmless idiosyncrasies of her hus- 
band’s, she might manage him better in future. 

“Precisely,” said Marianne, in an aloof voice, more 
as if she were fitting her father's conclusions to her own 
in some inner recess of her being than as if she were lis- 
tening to him. “ Flattery is the breath of his nostrils ; 
luxury the prime necessity of his existence. I have 
been a great injury to Randall, father. I have ham- 
pered him. ” 

‘ ‘ Who says so .? ” the old man asked, with clinched 
fists and flashing eyes. 

“I say so. You say so. Results say so.” 

“ / say so ? ” 

“Yes, you. You were the very first one that said 
so. Yours was a warning. I did not heed that. I 
have had another warning, father. I do not mean to 
neglect this one. ” 

“What do you mean. Nan-nan ? *’ 

His voice was awe-struck, she looked so excessively 
white and determined, so far removed from the influence 
of commonplace arguments. 

“ I mean just this,” she said. She folded her white 
hands resolutely before her on the table, and looked 
him gravely in the face as she went on. “You are not 
to interrupt me, father, and you are not to try to turn 


A SPLENDID EGO TIST. 


8l 


me. It would be absolutely useless. It was because 
I did not want to come to you in the first heat of my 
excitement, nor, in fact, until I had fully developed my 
plans, that you owe this anxious day. It never occurred 
to me that you might hear it all from Randall first. ” 

Pursuing his policy of peacemaker blindly, Mr. 
Grayson here interrupted her violently. 

“He said nothing harsh about you, Marianne. Be 
careful. Be just. I intend to be very impartial in this 
matter. ” He drew himself up magisterially. 

“I wish you to be,” she said, with a certain proud 
bitterness. “I am in Mr. Mackaye’s way, father. I 
hamper him. I cannot administer flattery in judicious 
doses. I would rather not have discussed this matter 
with you at all, but I did not care to write about it, and 
I did not want you to be wearing yourself out anxiously 
conjecturing about me.” 

“Conjecturing about you } Haven’t you come home 
to me .? — to stay with me .? ” 

“ Most assuredly not. Fortunately, in the old days, 
when you anticipated leaving me to my own resources, 
you gave me something that will stand me in good 
stead now, father.” 

She did not tell him that it had stood Randall Mac- 
kaye in good stead these two years of their married life. 

“My knowledge of painting, I mean. I can make a 
very good support. I came here to-day just to tell you 
good-bye, father, and to say I don’t want you to let 
this make any difference between you and Mr. Mac- 
kaye. He depends very much upon your advice and 
criticism. It is useful to him. He needs it. He must 
have somebody to lean on— some one person who 

6 


82 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


will not administer flattery — some one friend to tell 
him the truth.” 

The old man’s furrowed brow contracted angrily. 

“You are bent on this mad step.^ — this wicked 
step ” 

‘ ‘ I am. ” 

“ And for no adequate reason } ” 

“ I hamper him. I am going to leave him unham- 
pered. I want to put matters to the test.” 

Mr. Grayson got up and made the circuit of his 
cramped quarters several times before stopping in front 
of his daughter with his sternest face. 

“Marianne,” he said, “when I left Mackaye’s studio 
this morning, it wms with my heart full of wrath against 
him. I had nothing but condemnation in it for him 
and loving pity for you ; but, hang me ” — here he 
brought his withered hands violently together in his 
passionate pain — “since I’ve found you here, looking 
so unconcerned, and heard you discuss the matter so 
cold-bloodedly — hang me, if I don’t begin to pity 
Mackaye, and think it is more than half your fault.’* 

“It is all my fault,” said Marianne, getting up 
wearily and laying aside her work. “But, right or 
wrong, the step is taken. It cannot be retraced.” 

She was straightening things in the room with 
mechanical neatness, her face like a piece of sculpture 
in its hardness. 

“I had meant to say good-bye to you to-night, 
father, and to have asked you not to worry about me ; 
but you stayed so late that I made down the sofa-bed 
in the studio for myself. I believe we had better both 
try to get some sleep. ” 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


83 

She stood before him with her hands on his shoul- 
ders, inviting a kiss, her white, upraised face strained 
and pleading. 

“Where are you going, daughter.?” He tried to say 
it kindly. Her suffering touched him very nearly. 

“In yonder,” she said, nodding her head towards 
the drawn curtains, behind which the sofa-bed stood 
ready to give her tired body the rest that heart and soul 
needed so much more acutely. 

“I don’t mean to-night,” he answered, angrily. “ I 
mean ultimately ; at least, until your tit of the sulks 
has worn itself out.” 

How hard it was for the two men who should have 
known her best to grasp the tremendous underlying 
principle and indomitable will-power that lay at the 
bottom of this woman’s every action ! 

“That is not for you to know. I do not want it to 
be in anyone’s power to say that you are harboring a 
truant wife, father; but then — she laughed bitterly — 
‘ ‘ not one of Randall’s fashionable friends knows that he 
has a wife ! Good-night, father.” 

Once more she held her lips up childishly for a kiss. 

He stooped and kissed her lightly on the forehead. 
She turned away from him with a quivering lip and 
dropped the curtains between them. 

“She will be all right in the morning,” Mr. Grayson 
said, with calm conviction, as he made his own prepa- 
rations for the night. “It would never have done to 
have sided with her. They made a mistake, a big 
mistake, but they must work out their own salvation. 
I shall give her a real scolding to-morrow. She looked 
too white and tired to-night.” 


84 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


But long before he was awake the next morning, 
Marianne had slipped out of the studio and gone away, 
leaving written on a paper-pad in pencil marks : “ Don’t 
worry about me, father. I shall do very well. Don’t 
change towards Randall. It was all my fault. You 
shall hear from me if I am ill. Marianne.” 

The passengers on the very early ferry-boat coming 
from Hoboken to the city that morning looked with 
some curiosity at a tall, slender, thickly-veiled woman, 
who had walked straight through the cabin on coming 
aboard, and taken her stand against one of the short 
posts meant to stake off the passengers’ deck from the 
teamsters’ stand. 

It was such a queer hour of the morning for a lady 
passenger ! She was the only woman aboard. The 
boat was full of rough day-laborers, going to the city 
to work. The only man there who was not armed 
with a tin dinner-pail, or burdened with tools of some 
sort, moved restlessly from one side of the cabin to the 
other, in an effort to keep that still, slim form in 
sight. 

He had caught a glimpse of the ghastly, white face 
and the despairing eyes as she passed swiftly through 
the cabin and took her stand on the forward deck. She 
stood out there now, with her veil thrown back and 
her straining glance fixed upon the bay, over which 
lay a mantle of white mist, with an unseeing look. 
Who knew but what when they were mid-stream she 
might leap overboard to get rid forever of the misery 
that was making its presence felt, even to him, an utter 
stranger ? 

He moved restlessly in his seat, then, leaving it alto- 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


85 

gether, passed out through the glass doors and took his 
stand at a respectful distance from that motionless form. 
She would have to be very agile indeed to escape him, 
should she attempt anything rash. 

Marianne, becoming aware of his espionage, turned 
a haughty glance in his direction. He did not see it. 
His gaze was fixed immovably on the square, red tower 
of the Produce-Exchange, as it loomed over the mist- 
capped greenery of the Battery. What she took in, 
in that one swift glance, was a tall, well-knit form 
enveloped in a light top-coat, a pair of gentle brown 
eyes, and a strong, square chin, overshadowed by a 
heavy black moustache. Not once, by any chance, 
did their eyes meet. 

The boat glided into her slip. The workmen rushed 
tumultuously ashore with their tin-pails and tool-bags 
clattering about them. At a more leisurely gait Mari- 
anne followed, passed into the ferry-house, and was 
immediately swallowed up in the on-rushing stream of 
humanity that met her on the very threshold of the 
mighty city. 

Her fellow-traveller waited for her to precede him. 
If she suspected him of espionage, he would relieve her 
at last. It took him quite a little while to button his 
top-coat across his broad chest. As he passed through 
the now empty cabin he saw something white on the 
floor. He stopped and picked up the photo of an old 
man. He remembered seeing a large card sticking 
prominently in view from the outside pocket of the 
satchel held by the one lady passenger on the boat, 
the woman he had been watching. “Scarcely a 
lover,’' he said, looking at the wrinkled, intellectual face 


86 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


with curious interest, before putting the card in his 
pocket. “I wonder if I shall ever see her again? I 
shall remember her if I do. One does not meet a face 
like that twice in a lifetime. ” 

Then he,- too, was engulfed in the city’s life. 

The evening papers of that date contained an adver- 
tisement, which perhaps few ever read, and no one 
ever answered. This is it : 

“If the lady who lost photo of old gentleman, on six 
o’clock ferry-boat, coming from Hoboken to city this 
morning, will call at the office of Dr. John Milbank, 
71st street, and prove property, she can re- 
cover it. ” 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


87 


CHAPTER IX. 

You see, Mackaye, I am a trifle hampered when it 
comes to entertaining my friends decently at home. *’ 

Mr. Lenox was waxing confidential. He and the 
sculptor were alone in the dining-room at the close 
ot the Thursday's dinner to which Randall had been 
invited. There were a box of cigars and a bottle of 
wine between them on the table. He leaned over to 
fill Randall’s glass once more. The sculptor made a 
faint protest, then yielded. 

Randall Mackaye’s protests against the seductive 
things of life were faint (or feint). 

“Afraid.? Nonsense! It is a little heady, but you 
haven’t taken enough to hurt a sick baby yet. ” 

Evidently Mr. Lenox’s idea of entertaining his friends 
“decently” embodied frequent recourse to the wine- 
bottle. It never occurred to him that habitual (enforced) 
abstemiousness might make indulgence dangerous to 
his guest. 

“Yes, as I was saying. I’m a trifle hampered. I 
generally have my own friends up to the League to 
dinner. By-the-way, put me down for next Thursday 
at the Club. I want to introduce you to some fellows 
who’ve got lots more money than brains. This is Miss 
Lenox’s domain. My little girl is too young to be put 
at the head of a table full of men. Her position, too, is 
a little peculiar. No mother. My dear wife left us for 


88 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


a better world two years ago. Nothing in the woman 
line but Hildah. Hildah’s a good woman. God never 
made a better one — but — well — Hildah — is Hildah.'' 

Mr. Lenox laughed indulgently, filled the glasses 
again, and listened politely to Randall's fervent assev- 
eration that nothing could have been more delightful 
than the little family dinner they had just disposed 
of. It was so kind to admit him thus into the home 
circle. 

“Yes, but I take it you're not one of the domestic 
sort. You artists are generally Bohemians. However, 
you must stay and finish out the evening with Jeanne 
and Hildah. This is Jeanne's at-home. She gets 
rather a queer lot together. You see, Jeanne's position 
is rather trying. She's too young for her mother’s old 
set. They are inclined to patronize her, and the little 
monkey has ruled me with a rod of iron so long that 
she don't accept patronage very meekly from anybody. 
She wouldn’t from Queen Vic." 

Just here Jeanne's bright face was suddenly framed 
in the dining-room door, and her voice came to them 
in a little authoritative command. 

“Papa, if you are going to get any advice from Mr. 
Mackaye about your pictorial Noah’s Ark, I wish you 
would go now. Aunt Hildah and I will want him to 
help us presently." 

“All right, my tyrant. Come, Mackaye. I keep 
the Ark, but she entertains the animals. Jeanne gets a 
regular menagerie together every Thursday. " 

Jeanne laughed, then turned toward Randall with 
the daintiest possible frown puckering her smooth white 
forehead. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


89 


‘ ‘ At-homes are dreadful. Don’t you think so ” 

Randall reminded her of his limited opportunities of 
judging, at which she blushed in delicious confusion. 
She had never meant to permit the faintest allusion to 
any difference in their social status. 

^‘Ah, you are a stranger here yet awhile. Wait until 
this winter, and you will be bored out of your exist- 
ence.” 

“You see,” she went on rapidly, blushing vividly at 
his gallant assurance that he should escape boredom by 
only going where he was sure to meet her, “Aunt 
Hildah and papa make my at-homes so dreadfully 
difficult. Papa runs away entirely, as a general thing, 
and Aunt Hildah — poor, dear, patient Aunt Hildah — 
she sits behind the tea-things for all the world as if she 
were dispensing tea at a church-fair, for so much a cup, 
and was afraid she’d get the change wrong if she per- 
mitted conversation.” 

“ Hildah was born in Connecticut, educated in New 
Hampshire, and has spent the larger portion of a pure 
and blameless existence in New Jersey,” said Mr. 
Lenox, explanatorily. 

“You sha’n’t make fun of Aunt Hildah!” Jeanne 
turned on him with charming inconsistency. “ She is 
true gold at bottom. But you will stay and help 
me with all those stupid people to-night, Mr. Mac- 
kaye ? ” 

“ Of course he will. I’ll fetch him myself presently. 
Set Miss Cheney on to him, Jeanne. She’ll tell him 
more about art in half a minute than he could learn by 
a lifetime of arduous application ; and the cornetist — no, 
the flutist, will he be here to-night? ” 


90 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


They’ll all be here to-night,” said Jeanne, with her 
rippling, girlish laugh. “They know this is my last 
until in the fall.” She took a tiny diamond-studded 
watch from some hidden recess about her lace bodice. 
“Papa, I will give you just one half-hour for the 
pictures. After that, Mr. Mackaye belongs to me.” 

She threw him a daring look and fluttered out of sight. 
Randall followed his host in the opposite direction, 
towards the long wing-room which the Wall Street 
man had converted into a receptacle for all the pictures 
and statues and so-called works of art that had been 
accruing to several generations of Lenoxes. 

“You know, Mr, Mackaye,” Jeanne’s father said, 
stopping in front of a huge canvas, after they had made 
a slow circuit of the gallery, “as a rule we city men 
make egregious asses of ourselves whenever we un- 
dertake to buy pictures. There’s a lot of bare space 
here to be filled, and I’ve just got sense enough 
to know that I don’t know anything about this 
sort of thing,” waving his hand comprehensively ; 
“that is,” as if repenting of his humility, “ I think I 
know a fine thing when I see it, but these picture- 
dealers have such an infernal gift of the gab that they 
can talk an easy-going fellow into buying a picture, 
whether he likes it or not.” 

Randall admitted that the craft were not above tricks 
of the trade. 

“ So I need a supervisor, you perceive.” Thus, under 
the flimsiest veil of necessity, did Jeanne’s father 
attempt to keep his promise to her, and help this 
struggling native genius. “I want you to fill that 
space for me. Take your own time. Make your own 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


91 

selection. In the meantime draw on me for com- 
missions as soon as you please.” 

It was well-meant and kindly done. Nevertheless 
Randall Mackaye winced under it most unreasonably. 
Jeanne’s father placed a friendly hand on his arm. 

‘Now, then, my dear fellow, Fm under bonds to 
hand you over to the women. After all, they are the 
ones to float a fellow. I’ve got to meet some men at 
the club at half-past eight — some fellows from Albany 
wliQ are only in town for a day. You will excuse 
me.” 

He had been convoyed as far as the back parlor by 
Mr. Lenox, then Jeanne had come and taken possession 
of him with a little triumphant smile. 

“You won’t find it like Mrs. Rockwood’s at-home,” 
she said, laying her small gloved hand on his arm. 
“Mrs. Rockwood’s at-homes are perfect. Don’t you 
think so .? ” 

“I never attended but one, and then you were there. 
Of course it was perfect. ” 

He hated himself for the space of half a second after 
these vapid, empty words had escaped his lips, the 
girl by his side sent such a shy, sweet glance upward to 
him, and the red had come so swiftly into her smooth 
young cheeks. 

It was with a curious feeling of personal discomfort 
and harsh resentment surging up in him that he went me- 
chanically through no end of introductions to the rather 
callow brood that Jeanne had collected about her, before 
taking refuge near Miss Hildah, who stood entirely too 
much in awe of anybody who could do anything, even 
to raise her mild blue eyes towards the spot where 


92 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


“Jeanne’s artist” stood leaning gracefully against the 
blue-velvet mantel lambrequin, asking himself all sorts 
of spiteful questions. 

Why was Fate perpetually throwing this girl across 
his pathway.? Why was the girl herself such a 
tantalizingly charming bit of humanity that it was 
almost impossible to be near her without an uncon- 
trollable desire to say something caressing, to do some- 
thing rash ? Why was he so constituted that he musl 
be ministered to with smiles and tender words ? Why 
had Marianne chosen to absent herself at this particular 
juncture, flinging him back on himself just as he was 
getting a foothold among these people ? Finally — 
after all, what was Jerome Lenox’s liberal hospitality 
but a piece of class insolence .? He had held out his 
hand, with a promise of gold in it, to an obscure sculp- 
tor, who, as a man, was absolutely innocuous to his 
daughter, born in the purple, and hedged securely 
about with social boundary lines and family traditions. 

As he stood leaning against the mantelpiece, sipping 
the cup of tea which Jeanne had just brought him with her 
own hands and presented with one of those sweet, shy 
glances he loved so to provoke, he was seized with an 
infernal desire to put to route the insolent security of 
the lather, and win for himself the utmost this child- 
woman had to offer to any man. 

Who could blame him .? This intimacy was not of 
his seeking ! Moreover — would it not be for her happi- 
ness ? 

Where was his deranged fancy conducting him .? 
Far, very far from the low-ceiled, luxurious drawing- 
room, where he saw, as in a dream. Miss Hildah sitting 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


93 


rigidly behind the tea-things, making heroic efforts 
to entertain an unhappy-looking young man, whose 
fatuous smiles were entirely at variance with the 
hungry gaze that followed Jeanne, as she flitted gayly 
from one group to the other, trying vainly to infuse 
some of her own vitality into the incongruous material 
that made up her at-home. 

He saw and heard it all, in a hazy fashion. Some- 
body sang, and he helped applaud him or her (.?) 
Somebody recited something. He could never recall 
what it was, only, as it seemed to excite mild merriment 
from Jeanne's well-bred guests, he indulged in a moder- 
ate amount of smiling as his contribution. 

The room was growing intolerably hot, the per- 
fume of flowers and extracts overpowering. He wan- 
dered back to the picture-gallery. Softly-shaded lamps 
were burning in various parts of the long room. 
He passed a mirror. Something in his own appear- 
ance struck him as peculiar. He stopped to survey 
himself deliberately. The man in the glass seemed to 
fling an accusation at him : 

‘‘Randall Mackaye, you are an infernal scoundrel, 
not fit to breathe the air of Jeanne Lenox's home. Go 
home before you let the villainy in your soul escape at 
your lips." 

It was good advice ! He turned to obey it. A gurgle 
of triumphant laughter floated towards him. Jeanne 
was coming swiftly towards him with outstretched 
hands. 

“Aunt Hildah said you had gone home, bored to 
death. But I thought I should find you here. Papa 
had no business to fill your mind with business this 


94 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


evening. You are mine for to-night. Stop thinking 
about these blank spaces. ’’ 

She looked up at him coquettishly. Her hand was in 
his. It lay there passively as he looked down at her with 
burning eyes. The remnant of the thing he called his 
conscience made one of its feeblest efforts to be heard. 

“ I think I had better not go back to the drawing- 
room, Miss Lenox. There is some work crying out in 
my studio for my presence. Let me make my adieux 
here. I have had a charming evening. 

You have had nothing of the sort,” said Jeanne, 
with her most irresistible pout, “and if you go away 
now, I shall think — ” 

“ Think what ” 

His voice was thick. His burning gaze held her fas- 
cinated — enthralled. 

‘ ‘ That — you — do — not— like — me. ” 

She said it slowly and daringly, never once dropping 
her eyes. It was almost a challenge. 

“ Child, you don’t know what you are saying ! You 
don’t know what you are doing.” 

He caught her in his arms. He drew her close to 
him, pressed one long, clinging kiss upon her pure young 
lips, then, holding her from him at arm’s length, his 
passionate excitement culminated in a question asked 
with brutal directness : 

“Jeanne, do you love me.? ” 

The answer came to him in a fluttering sigh, scarcely 
audible above the stormy beating of his own heart. 
She stood before him with shy, downcast eyes : 

“Yes — you know — I do.” 

‘ ‘ God help you, little one ! ” 


A SPLEA^DID EGOTIST. 


95 


It came from him with a groan. He flung her hands 
from him with passionate impatience, passed swiftly 
out of the gallery, found his hat, and left the house, 
without even glancing towards the drawing-room, 
where he could still hear the inane chatter of Jeanne’s 
guests. 

Jeanne stood where he had left her, plunged in a 
delicious maze of gratifled vanity, bewilderment at her 
lovers sudden departure, and a host of other novel sen- 
sations. Then she settled it all with her usual prompt 
decision, holding her hands the while to her hot cheeks. 

“ Poor fellow, he is afraid of papa. That is all. He 
thinks rich men are all ogres, and he is about to be 
devoured by one. He is a tempest. I adore him ! ” 


96 


A SFLENDID EGOTIST, 


CHAPTER X. 

When Randall Mackaye opened his eyes the next 
morning he found himself stared in the face by two 
excessively disagreeable facts : he had enacted the 
double role of fool and knave, on his first appearance as 
Jerome Lenox’s guest ; and he had a splitting head- 
ache. 

Perhaps, if his physical discomfort had been less, his 
moral compunction might have been greater. As it 
was, he flung himself desperately out of bed and 
plunged his disordered head into cold water. In the 
midst of his ablutions the memory of certain previous 
periods of pain came back to him — periods when he had 
been ministered unto by a white-handed woman, skilled 
of touch and ready of sympathy. But these memories 
only served to inflame his wrath to a higher pitch. 

“It is a deuced bore,” he reflected, viciously rub- 
bing his curly head with a big towel the while, “to 
have to look out for one’s self, at any time ; worse 
than a deuced bore to go stumbling about like a horse 
with the blind staggers, hunting for clean things. 
When Mrs. Mackaye does put in an appearance I shall 
settle things on a firmer basis.” 

The possibility of Marianne’s never returning to him 
had not, up to that time, entered the egotist’s mind. He 
had quickly disposed of the alarm aroused by finding 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


97 

that she was notin Hoboken : “She has gone to visit that 
sickly old cousin of hers, up about Lake George some- 
where, who is always writing for her. Doubtless she 
is enjoying her outing, while I am fuming about her.” 

In dressing-gown and slippers he sat down to “face 
the situation.” It so chanced that he also faced “ Love’s 
Young Dream,” when, flinging himself into the most 
comfortable chair in the room, the finished plaster 
model stood draped in its ghostly sheet, behind a 
curtain. Nearer by, the unfinished work in marble 
depressed him with its suggestions of idleness, lack of 
purpose, and other unpleasant things. It w’^as almost 
as if Marianne herself had turned her head away from 
him in cold disdain of him as he was. He had seen 
her assume just that attitude so often. 

From the beginning he had worked on his master- 
piece in his own erratic fashion. The head, with its 
rounded neck, was almost finished. One arm, termi- 
nating in an exquisitely moulded hand, was entirely 
finished. The cold, impassive fingers lay rigidly 
against the unshaped mass that was to be chiselled into 
drapery. 

In his rare moments of feverish impatience to see this, 
“ //ze work of his life, ” completed, he had sometimes 
contemplated following the example of his craft and 
turning model and all over to a mason to be finished. 
But his finer instincts recoiled against it. And Mari- 
anne, too, had recoiled from the suggestion. The 
work had been conceived and the plaster model 
executed during their honeymoon, when love’s young 
dream was a blissful daily actuality to them both. 

That proud little head, turned slightly sidewise, was 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


98 

Marianne’s head. That round, swelling throat, hers. 
Those full, sloping shoulders ; the softly-springing 
bust ; the perfect arm, tapering down to the faultless 
wrist and hand, were hers — all hers. It was not as if a 
hireling model had furnished all that entrancing beauty. 
He could not call in the aid of the fellow who had 
“chopped out” his Psyche. This work must be his 
alone, from the beginning to the end. So he had settled 
it long ago. 

The modelling had been a delight, the copying was 
torture. Patient diligence was not his forte. 

As he sat there that morning, racked with pain, he was 
close enough to the statue to put out one feverish hand 
and touch its cold, white, unresponsive fingers. He 
drew his hand back with a nervous laugh. 

“Confound the thing! If I stay shut up with it 
here much longer alone it will give me the horrors. 
Better make a finish of it and get it out of sight.” 

Not then, though. He had not the remotest idea of 
lifting hammer or chisel until he felt better. 

He rang for a messenger-boy and ordered in some 
breakfast. When it came he felt in his side-pocket for 
the bills that Marianne had enclosed in her letter, and 
paid for it. He would rather not have been reduced to 
the vulgar necessity of using that money, but as he was, 
there was no reason why it should mar his appetite for 
the breakfast it had procured him. 

He made a virtuous effort to take himself to task 
while dawdling over his late meal. He had acted 
shabbily at Lenox’s. How should he retrieve himself.? 
Tell the girl he was a married man, who, under the 
influence of her father’s “heady” wine, had forgotten 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


99 


himself and stolen a kiss ? Invite a cowhiding- from 
Jeanne’s father? — or so play his cards that the Lenox 
doors would still be open to him and poor little Jeanne 
be kept from tears ? 

Plainly the latter alternative was the most sensible. 

“A trifle risky? Yes; but life without a spice of 
danger in it is so infernally slow. ” 

He was planning the next step in his social campaign 
with careful deliberation, resolving to make up for past 
blunders by extreme future caution, when an interrup- 
tion came. 

Somebody knocked, and in answer to his permission 
to enter, a tall form loomed in the doorway, and the 
scent of roses was wafted to him. He turned his head 
languidly, and then stood up, looking pleased and 
surprised. 

‘Xhiltern? Why, I thought you had been out of 
town this month past. Hold on ! let me see if I can 
find accommodation for you and that gorgeous bunch 
of roses. My room is not always in this wrecked 
condition. ” 

“The bunch of roses you will have to accommodate. 
They are for you, and I’m glad enough to get rid of 
them. With your permission rif accommodate myself 
here in this jolly window-seat.” 

“For me?” said Randall, taking up the bunch of 
roses his visitor had thrown down on the table, with a 
stare of genuine surprise. 

Yes, for you. It's a great thing to be the coming 
man, rising luminary, and all that sort of thing. 
There’s where you art fellows get the better of us poor 
limbs of the law, especially when you happen to supple- 


lOO 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


ment the artistic temperament with a Byronic head 
and a Garibaldian mustache. Who would ever think 
of sending me floral tributes ? ” 

“That is a fact. You are a lawyer/’ said Randall, 
looking at him reflectively. 

Chiltern’s nonsense went for nothing. He was an 
“effusive boy.” A good-natured one, however, who, 
Randall was quite sure, had persuaded his mother to 
purchase his Psyche at a fancy price. Perhaps on the 
present occasion he might extract some legal points 
from the young counsellor. 

His gravity had a sobering effect on the laughing boy 
in the window seat. He fixed his clear, blue eyes on 
Randall’s pale face with kindly interest. 

“You look rather seedy, old fellow. Working too 
hard, I guess. Mother sent you those roses, and told me 
to say that she is going to have a lot of nice girls out at 
our place next week, and she wants you to come and 
help entertain them. ” 

“Thanks for the roses — and for the invitation.” 

“Oh, as for the roses, they take the earth out yonder 
in June, and as for the invitation, the thanks, if you 
accept, will come from us.” 

Randall looked at him meditatively. Dolly’s attach- 
ment for himself was one of the queerest of his town 
experiences. His visitor was scarcely more than a boy, 
a slender, handsome, manly young fellow, who had 
been so closely watched and warded by his woman- 
kind, that association with Randall Mackaye had seemed 
to open a delightful door of escape into the Bohemia 
for which his inexperienced soul panted. 

It would have been better for Jeanne Lenox if the rigid 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


loi 


cordon of propriety that so chafed Adolphus Chiltern 
could have been drawn around her instead. 

‘^Td like to live this way,” said Dolly, sucking the 
head of his cane, and staring about him with bright, in- 
terested eyes. 

“ Then you must be naturally a depraved wretch,” 
said Randall, laughing. ‘ ‘ I call this living like a dog. 
Everything’s in a confounded mess.” 

The studio missed Marianne’s dainty supervision. 

“If it is,” said Dolly, discontentedly, “it’s living like 
a free dog. I live like one of those pop-eyed, bow- 
legged pugs, sleek and well-fed, but some woman or 
other’s always got hold of the other end of my chain, 
and I’ve got to go just the way they pull.” 

“How many ‘theys’ are there?” Randall asked, 
soothingly. Not that he was very much interested in 
the answer, but he was meditating putting a legal 
question to Dolly presently, and he wanted to keep him 
there until the question had formulated itself clearly to 
his own intelligence. 

“Five,’ said Dolly, in an injured tone. “One 
mother, two aunts, and two sisters. What chance has 
a fellow among such a lot of petticoats ? ” 

“Chances for what?” Randall asked, with a certain 
virtuous sternness in his voice that Dolly found im- 
pressive. 

“Chance to make a man of himself.’’ 

“ It depends on what sort of a man you want to make 
of yourself ” 

“Oh, well, I don’t want to make a beast of myself 
I hate nasty things. And I don’t think I’d want to lie, 
gamble, or drink, even if I were left to my own devices. 


102 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


But, then — oh, well, hang it — a fellow don’t like to have 
to give an account of himself, you know, five times over.” 

Randall laughed, and Dolly joined in with light-hearted 
recognition of his own absurdity. Then, with an im- 
pulse quite unaccountable to himself, the older man 
came over and stood where he could look straight down 
into the boy’s clear, frank eyes. 

‘'Dolly, there are all sorts of chains in this world, 
and all sorts of dogs tugging at them, but I think, if I 
had to take my chances over again. I’d like to feel that 
my chain was firmly in the grasp of something — some- 
body — stronger and better than my own weak self.” 

“ Say that over again,” said Dolly, in his eager 
young voice. “1 want to remember it verbatim.” 

“Why?” 

“Well, you see” — he shifted one long leg restlessly 
across the other and back again, before finishing his sen- 
tence — “you see, mothers the best woman in the 
world. There’s no question about that, but she is 
strait-laced, and she was a little afraid of you, you 
know.” 

“Afraid of me ? ” 

“Yes, this way, you know. I guess I have talked a 
lot of stuff about you, and she was afraid I was getting 
fond of one of those Bohemians, don’t you know — who 
have not any moral sense, don’t you see. But that idea 
of yoiirs will fetch her, you know. You’re not angry 
with me ! I thought I’d like you to know, so that when 
you come out, if mother seems to be studying you, you 
know, you’ll understand.” 

“Yes, I understand,” said Randall, absently. He 
was engaged just then in drawing a contrast between 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


103 

the piquant daring of Jeanne Lenox and the girlish 
timidity of Adolphus Chiltern. 

“You’ll come,” said Dolly, rising and towering above 
the sculptor by a whole inch. “You’ll come to help 
me through,’’ he added, urgently, watching Randall’s 
face solicitously. “Mother never has any but the 
nicest girls out. You know, she and the aunts empanel 
a committee and sit on them. They are going to marry 
me off some day, in spite of myself, to the wrong girl, 
of course.” He laughed helplessly. 

“Who, for instance, are some of the nice girls that 
will be with you week after next 1 ” 

“ Oh, I don’t know. About a dozen. That’s 
mother’s idea of ‘ making home happy ’ for me. Miss 
Jeanne Lenox for one. Ever seen her .? ” 

Randall winced ; his answer was lost in Dolly’s flow 
of eloquence. 

“ Now, she’s real nice. A regular little high-stepper, 
and as jolly as you please. She makes fun for the 
whole house when she comes. ” 

“Then, perhaps, after all,” said Randall, impelled to 
say something, “the chain will be pulled in the right 
direction this time.” 

“ That chain is in Miss Lenox’s hand,” said Dolly, 
with boyish chivalry, “and she won’t be pulled about 
by anybody. But, ’pon honor, I never meant to have 
consumed but five minutes of your valuable time.” 

“My time is not very valuable this morning. I’ve 
been fighting a headache. By-the-way, Chiltern, didn’t 
I understand, from somebody, that you had passed your 
examination very creditably, and was prepared to prac- 
tice law this coming winter .? ” 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


to4 

“1 don’t know about the creditable examination,” 
said Dolly, a pink flush mounting into his smooth, 
beardless cheeks, “but I am a so-called lawyer. Have 
taken desk room with old Judge Hallam Foote. You 
know I musTbe under somebody’s wing.” 

‘ ‘ Then maybe you can give me the law in a certain 
imaginary case. I don’t know that I ought to call it 
imaginary, either. I will be very frank with you, 
Dolly ; of course trusting entirely to your honor for 
secrecy. ” 

“ That of course without saying,” said Dolly, proudly. 

After a moment’s hesitation Randall began : “I have 
a friend in Vermont who has come to grief in a domestic 
way recently.” 

He paused for half a second, perhaps overcome with 
a sense of his own contemptible perfidy. Dolly stood, 
hat in hand, politely interested. 

“He had married, from pure love, a woman who 
afterwards turned out to be something of a shrew. She 
left him on a very slight provocation, and my poor 
friend writes to me for advice as to what steps to take 
in the matter.” 

“Does he want her back?” Dolly asked, his blue 
eyes fixed inquiringly on the pale face before him. 

“That — I — am — not — quite sure about.” 

“Well, it all depends on that,” said Dolly, glibly. 
He was quite willing to give unfeed advice in the 
matter of this domestic tragedy. “If he wants her 
back, I suppose all he’s got to do is, metaphorically, of 
course, to go on his knees to her.” 

“My friend is not much given to genuflexion. 
Moreover, he does not know where she is. ” 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


105 

“ Desertion ! A clear case of desertion ! In that 
case all he has to do is to summon her to return a 
certain number of times, and, in case of refusal, after five 
years the law presumes her dead, and he is a free man 
— free to marry again.” 

“A free man! Five years! Jeanne is very 
young.” 

Randall repeated the words to himself over and 
over again. Free to enjoy all the nice, soft things For- 
tune was flinging in his way with such unexpected 
lavishness ! Free to claim his place in that glittering 
social circle into which he fitted so comfortably and so 
naturally! Free — if he so willed it— to finally marry 
Jeanne Lenox ! To Chiltern his only response was an 
indifferent — 

“Ah, well, I don’t know why I have bothered you 
with this tempest in a tea-pot, but I was going to write to 
this friend of mine this morning, and as the poor fellow 
had asked for my advice, I wanted to be able to give it 
to him intelligently. Thanks to you, I can do so 
how. ” 

Dolly flushed with pride as he held out his hand. 

“Glad to be of the slightest service to any friend of 
yours. Ta-ta. I can tell mother you will come .? 

“Don’t promise for me, Chiltern. Thank her, and 
tell her if I can get away from my gallery I will be only 
too happy.” 

“You do look confoundedly done up,” said Dolly, 
kindly. “ I think you’ll find a tonic in our country 
air, to say nothing of the girls. ” 

He was gone, and Randall Mackaye turned away 
from the last gaze of his clear young eyes with an in- 


I 06 A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 

tolerable sense of unworthiness weighing him down. 
He wondered bitterly why Fate had not supplied him 
with all the good things of this world, and given him a 
lot of women to keep him from going astray. 

“I needed them more than Dolly did. That boy’s 
soul is clean to the very bottom. ” 

Mrs. Chiltern’s roses were scenting the air. Mrs. 
Chiltern’s invitation was tempting him to risk a whole 
week under the same roof with Jeanne Lenox. Why 
should he not take each day’s luxury as it was offered 
to him, and stop trying to straighten out the “ accursed 
snarl of Marianne’s making” ? 

Always some one outside of himself to shift the 
burden of blame upon ! 

The bunch of roses recalled a promise forgotten up 
to that second. Had he not taken Jeanne’s roses from 
her on the night of Mrs. Rockwood’s at-home, with a 
promise that she should have them back in more lasting 
shape ? He had left those roses on a bench in Wash- 
ington Square — but these would do quite as well. 

A few moments later, with a small canvas in front of 
him, and his water-colors spread out around him, he 
was transferring Mrs. Chiltern’s roses to canvas, and 
formulating a satisfactory explanation of his tardiness 
in the matter for Miss Lenox’s benefit 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


107 


CHAPTER XI. 

“Miss Lenox is difficult this morning, and I am in 
despair. ” 

It looked much more like temper than despair. 
Florence laid the ivory brush down with an emphatic 
thud on Miss Lenox’s dressing-table, after flourishing it 
wildly for half a second over the wilful little head of 
her mistress. Jeanne looked at her reproachfully in the 
mirror. 

“ Y\orance / I really believe you would like to thump 
me over the head with that brush, as disagreeable 
nursery-maids do spoilt children. ” 

“ Miss Lenox is a spoilt child,” said the maid, fold- 
ing her arms, and looking defiance into Jeanne’s 
reflected eyes. 

‘ ‘ Florence ! ” 

The pronunciation and intonation were distinctly 
Saxon this time. 

“ I repeat — Mademoiselle is extremely difficult this 
morning. ” 

Jeanne leaned placidly forward to scrutinize the 
arrangement of fluffy curls about her white forehead, 
which she and her maid had just come to grief over. 

“ I am not any more difficult than usual. I always 
like to look nice for my own sake — and — and — for 
papa’s. ” 


Io8 A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 

Florence's thin nostrils dilated with scorn, but no 
audible rejoinder escaped her bloodless lips. 

“But this morning," Jeanne went on, ruthlessly- 
pulling out a myriad of hair-pins and sowing them 
broadcast over carpet, chairs, toilet-stand, “you seem 
spitefully bent on making a perfect guy of me." 

“It is not in the hair; it is in the loss of sleep. 
Emotion does not make women beautiful," said 
Florence, with calm insolence. “Miss Lenox is not 
well this morning." 

Jeanne looked at her in wild alarm. How much did 
she know.? How much did she guess.? After all, 
French maids were horrid things. She drew herself up 
with the most imposing austerity, and said, slowly : 

“ Florence, I think I want you to go away." 

Florence shrugged her angular shoulders impatiently. 

“ Entirely away, Miss.? Out of the house.? Out of 
Miss Lenox's service .? " 

“Yes," with an imperious stamp of a small foot; 
“entirely away, out of the house, out of my service. 
You make yourself detestable lately.” 

“ Detestable ! Mon Dteu, I am discretion itself." 

“ Discretion ! " 

“ Miss Lenox needs a discreet person near her.” 

“ What do you mean .? ” Jeanne asked, with flashing 
eyes and hot cheeks. 

“Just this," said Florence, catching the girl’s trem- 
bling little hands in hers, and laying a long, brown, 
insolent finger first on one wrist, then on the other. 

Jeanne’s eyes dropped in confusion. Upon the soft, 
white flesh of either arm a circular reddish indentation 
was plainly visible. She had worn her bracelets with 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


109 

the antique cameo clasps the night before. “Mr. 
Mackaye had admired them at Mrs. Rockwood’s.’' 
When he had drawn her towards him in that swift, 
passionate moment, yonder in the picture-gallery, he 
had held her tightly by the wrists, pressing the sharp 
gold clasps into the tender flesh. She remembered 
now, for the first time, that it had hurt her then — but 
what was that fleeting pain by comparison with the 
inrushing joy of knowing that he loved her.? She drew 
the lace of her sleeve quickly over the faint red spots. 

Florence was smiling into her perturbed face with 
calm malice. ^‘This child must be quelled,” the maid 
told herself. “Mademoiselle should keep her adorers 
at a greater distance. Those marks are disfiguring. 
Permit me. Monsieur need not have been so tempest- 
uous. ” 

She brought her jar of cold cream and quietly applied 
it to Jeanne’s wrists. The girl stood cowed and trem- 
bling before her. All the dubious tales that Florence 
had to tell of previous mistresses rushed into her mem- 
ory with startling distinctness. How could she tel] but 
what Florence might manufacture some equally dubious 
tale concerning herself, in case of a rupture .? Plainly it 
would be best to placate her maid. Poor little friend- 
less Jeanne ! A fluttering dove in the merciless clutch 
of a hawk ! 

“ Florence,” she said, resuming her chair in front of 
the mirror with the docility of a conquered child, “try 
my hair again, do ; that’s a good girl.” 

Florence took up the comb and brush as if the mys- 
teries of the toilette had never been interrupted : “Then 
Miss Lenox does not dismiss me .? ” 


I lO 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


“And — Florence/’ not answering directly, ‘‘if you 
think you can alter that jet mantle to fit your shoulders, 
you can have it. The one you like so much, you 
know. ” 

The peace thus purchased left Florence, the maid, 
more strongly intrenched than ever in a position she 
had never meditated abandoning for a second. While 
Jeanne — 

Well, Jeanne had a delightful diversion before her 
toilette was quite complete. A package and a note were 
handed in. The package contained the freshest and 
daintiest of water-color sketches. 

“ My roses ! look, Florence ! Isn’t it too lovely? ” 

Florence silently regarded the sketch with critical 
eyes. She was quite sure this artist lover of Miss 
Lenox’s was a fraud. Her young lady had worn full- 
blown ‘ ‘ American Beauties ” that night, and here was a 
lot of — the Lord only knew what. She doubted whether 
he had painted them at all. She would make it her 
business to inform herself concerning monsieur, the 
artist. All this to herself, of course. 

Jeanne was fluttering about her desk. There was a 
note to be answered — a note, in which Randall 
Mackaye asked if he might call on Miss Lenox between 
the hours of two and three. He feared he might be en- 
croaching on her visiting hours, but, under the circum- 
stances, hoped she would pardon and receive him. 

With a tremendous sense of guilt throbbing at her 
pure little heart, Jeanne devised an errand to her dress- 
maker, which should take Florence down-town at the 
precise time Randall Mackaye should be coming up- 
town. She had made a humiliating discovery. She 
was afraid of Florence. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


1 1 1 

“As if,” she said to herself, combatively, “no one 
ever received a lover alone before ! ” 

So it came about that Florence was safely out of the 
way when Jeanne received Randall Mackaye in the 
long parlor, where the rich portieres and the lace cur- 
tains ^t the windows fell in the long, straight folds so 
dear to the lovers of privacy. 

“Not at home to anyone else.” 

Miss Lenox had given this order imperiously to the 
footman who had brought Randall’s card to her on a 
salver. Then she swept into the sculptor’s presence 
and, with a great, but very shallow pretence of being 
entirely at her ease, rushed into a shockingly crude but 
altogether flattering criticism of the water-sketched 
roses. 

Randall heard her through with a patience which was 
not as commendable as it looked. He was gathering 
strength for the next act in this “society drama.” 

“Miss Lenox,” he said, abruptly, and there was a 
creditable tremor in his voice, “I came here to say 
something which had best be said in as few words as 
possible.” 

“ Yes } ” 

They were sitting opposite each other, Jeanne on a 
low divan, he in a curiously constructed piece of up- 
holstery, which made him feel as if he ought to be 
stationed in a corner, instead of squarely in front of 
that girl, whose clear eyes were rather discomposing. 
She had dropped them upon her folded hands now, 
though, and seemed absorbed in contemplation of the 
jewelled rings which adorned them, twdsting them about 
aimlessly. 


1 I 2 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


‘•Yes/’ Randall went on, a trifle more smoothly, 
leaning forward and touching a floating ribbon among 
her draperies. “I had no right to ask you to receive 
me this morning. But I wanted to tell you something; 
must tell you something, in fact.” 

Again that faint “Yes?” tremulous and soft from 
Jeanne’s red lips, smote upon the silent room. 

“I am an in — an unmitigated scoundrel, Jeanne — 
Miss Lenox — and deserve to be ordered from your 
presence as you would order an insolent lackey who 
had put an affront upon you.” 

Jeanne looked at him with disturbed, incredulous 
eyes. 

“ I — do — not — understand you ! ” 

“Of course you don’t. How can you? I don’t 
understand myself.” It was stupid, but he was be- 
fogged. 

She leaned forward with a divine pity in her clear,, 
young eyes. 

“You — are — afraid of papa.” Then pity was put to 
flight by an archly encouraging smile. 

A ghastly palor overspread Randall’s handsome face. 

“ He — he — does not know — anything? ” 

“No — 1 — there — was nothing for me to tell him. 
You—” 

“True — true! You could hardly have told him 
that he had entertained a’ villain at dinner, and that you 
had been insulted by that villain afterwards.” 

“Insulted?” She drew her slim form up to its 
utmost capacity. She looked him straight in the eyes. 
A certain chill had come into her voice. She seemed 
in a second to have put him at an immeasurable 
distance. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


II3 

But the egotist before her had planned every step in 
this interview carefully before leaving his studio. He 
was not to be thrown off his cue by that sudden up- 
flaming of her wrath, which only enhanced her beauty 
distractingly. 

“Yes, in'sulted. Is it not an insult for a man in my 
position, a poor, unknown, obscure modeller of clay 
and chipper of marble, to raise longing eyes to Jerome 
Lenox’s daughter } Is it not an insult for a man abso- 
lutely debarred from even the possibility of asking a 
woman to be his wife to permit his passion for that 
woman to override his prudence .? Is it not an insult 
for a man to pour meaningless words of love into a girl’s 
ear and to extort from her avowals that can lead to 
nothing, as I extorted them from you last evening, my 
poor little Jeanne ” 

“ ‘Meaningless words ’ ‘ lead to nothing ’ .? ” 

She picked those two phrases out of the speech he 
had delivered with headlong impetuosity, and repeated 
them over and over again, as if she were trying to 
translate them into something understandable 

“Meaningless words.? — lead to nothing.?” 

He repeated them himself, with a certain dogged 
insistence : “Yes, meaningless words that can lead to 
nothing. ” 

“Why.?” she asked him, abruptly, dashing her hand 
across her eyes, as if clearing away a physical mist. 

“Because I never can — I never intend to repeat one 
word of all the stuff I poured into your innocent ears 
last night, until I am in a position to face your father, 
and say to him, ‘Jerome Lenox, by the help of my 
own strong right arm I have carved out a position that 


14 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


you cannot look down upon/ It may be a long time 
before I can do it, Jeanne. Two years — perhaps three 
— perhaps longer — perhaps never. Until then ” 

He stood up and held out his hand. He considered 
he had conducted the interview with considerable skill. 
The girl before him was fluttering and flushing with an 
access of love and admiration. She, too, stood up and 
held out both hands. She was looking up into his face 
with shy, true eyes. 

‘‘Until then.?” 

“Until then, good-bye. I must not stand in the way 
of some more fortunate man. I will not hamper 
you. ” 

“Until then,” she said, dropping her eyes and speak- 
ing very softly but quite distinctly, “I — will — wait. 
There will be no other — fortunate man. What are two 
years.? — three.? — four.? You will be great — and — I — 
shall be proud of you. Father likes you now.” 

He could have drawn her to him again. He could 
have sealed her rash promise with another guilty kiss. 
There was invitation in her attitude. He credited him- 
self afterwards with a sternly virtuous purpose. He 
dropped her hands and turned away from her with a 
long-drawn, genuine sigh. 

The trying interview was over, and instead of losing 
ground with her he had taken position on a much 
higher plane. He was quite safe until his legal shackles 
should be knocked off by the majestic arm of the law. 
He dropped her hands and turned away, leaving her 
standing there, with bright, trustful, hopeful eyes 
turned full upon his retreating figure. 

When he got back to the studio his patience was 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


I15 

sorely tried. He had to touch the electric button to 
the elevator a third and a fourth time before he could 
discover any motion in the machinery. It descended 
slowly. As the door finally slid back, a tall, dark 
woman stepped into the corridor, and brushing swiftly 
past him, walked rapidly towards the entrance. She 
had given him one piercing look from a pair of fierce 
black eyes in passing, a look so full of malignity that 
the sculptor was impelled to ask : 

‘ ‘ Who is that woman } ” 

“ Somebody for the janitor,'’ the elevator boy 
answered. “ 'Twas her that kept me waiting so 
long.” 

It was in vain that Randall tried to recall when and 
where he had before seen that tall, spare figure, and 
those peculiarly fierce black eyes. He could not fit them 
to the woman who, on the night when Jeanne Lenox had 
driven him home from Mrs. Rockwood’s, had opened 
the carriage door on the side towards the square and 
seated herself in the coupe, for he had not looked 
beyond Jeanne's face. 

Florence had been very busy that morning. She had 
interviewed Miss Lenox's dressmaker and Mr. Mac- 
kaye's janitor, and now she was going home, flushed 
with a sense of achievement. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


1 16 


CHAPTER XII. 

Three of the five females whose mission in life it 
was, according to Dolly Chiltern, to hold him well in 
leash, were sitting upon the eastern veranda of the 
country house to which that young gentleman had 
recently invited his friend the sculptor with such 
cordial insistence. 

They were Mrs. Chiltern and her two unmarried 
sisters, the Misses Patterson. The other two guardians 
of Dolly’s morals and manners were engaged elsewhere 
just then, laboring over the entertainment of a rather 
crude lot of girls, whom they were trying to interest in 
old-world photographs in the absence of new-world 
beaux. 

The female sex was always unduly prominent in 
Mrs. Chiltern’s gatherings. Not that the men were 
purposely excluded, but Chilternhurst was not a popu- 
lar house with Dolly’s town friends. They liked him 
best at the club, or in his rooms, or on the mall. 

There was a certain unconscious austerity about 
Mrs. Chiltern that inspired them with awe. This, 
added to the avowed prejudice of all five of Dolly’s 
guardians to the use of tobacco, even in its most 
respectable forms, conspired to multiply the excuses 
and the regrets of the invited men. 

This season Dolly’s sisters found bitter cause of com- 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


17 


plaint against him for his unblushing tendency to 
devote himself to one particular girl. It made the 
others “ a load to carry.’’ 

No one could have felt the slightest hesitancy in 
deciding which of the three women on the veranda was 
Dolly’s mother. All three were similarly engaged 
at that moment with balls of worsted and big ivory 
crochet-needles, the only difference being that one ball 
of worsted was red, another yellow, the third blue. The 
morning was bright, the skies overhead were blue. The 
spots of vivid color out on the sloping lawn showed that 
the dahlias and geraniums were doing all that could be 
required of them; and, apart from the chronic considera- 
tion of Dolly’s future, life was an altogether pleasant 
and placid affair for the ladies of Chilternhurst. 

Dolly’s mother was tall and slender, and, having 
gone permanently into mourning on the decease of 
Dolly’s father, there was a sort of monumental stateli- 
ness about her that was quite impressive. She was a 
serious-looking matron, with a shrewd eye and a firm 
mouth, to say nothing of her nose, which was of the 
type which goes much farther towards establishing its 
possessor’s claim to dignity than volumes of verbal 
testimony to that fact. 

She had just finished reading a letter aloud to her 
sisters, and was debating whether she should call across 
the lawn to Dolly, and convey its contents to him 
immediately. 

He was in full view of them, just on the other side 
of the tennis-court. His long legs were stretched com- 
fortably on the vivid close-clipped grass, his bright tennis- 
cap reposed, with his head inside of it, movelessly against 


i8 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


the red arm of an iron lawn-seat His arms were 
folded across his broad, full chest Above him sat 
Jeanne Lenox, her face entirely hidden from view by 
a huge straw hat-brim. There was an open book in her 
lap, and the presumption was that she was reading 
Dolly to sleep, or had already done so, so motionless 
was the long, lithe body on the grass at her feet 

“ I think I wouldn’t disturb them,” said Miss Emily 
Patterson, laying down a shapeless mass of wool-work, 
to glance across at Dolly. “ They look very comfort- 
able, and luncheon will soon be ready. ” 

Miss Emily Patterson had an embodied echo in her 
sister. Miss Maria Patterson, so it was only necessary 
to secure the opinion of one to grasp the convictions of 
the other, (Dolly was much given to this sort of con- 
densation). Miss Maria echoed promptly on this oc- 
casion : 

“Yes, luncheon will soon be ready, and they do 
look so cosy, you know, that I think that I wouldn’t 
disturb them. No, I wouldn’t disturb them.” 

Miss Maria, indeed all five of Dolly’s guardians, were 
fully aware of the condition of his heart. Nothing 
could have fitted in better with their own individual 
and aggregate desires. Jeanne Lenox had been fully 
and frequently discussed in the abstract, and with a 
view to her fitness for Adolphus. 

(No one of the five, unless, indeed, occasionally his 
sister Anna, the youngest of the family, ever called him 
Dolly. But, then, Anna had always been a trifle friv- 
olous. ) 

“Jeanne was a thoroughly well-principled girl. 

“Jeanne was bright and practical, while Adolphus 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


I19 

was inclined to be run away with by his enthusiasms. 
She would be an admirable check on him. ” 

“Jeanne moved in his own circle, and there would 
be no clashing of social interests.'' 

“Jeanne was the handsomest girl in New York, and 
Adolphus was such an adorer of beauty. " 

“Jeanne was the best-dressed girl at any gathering, 
and Adolphus was so fastidious." 

Plainly there could be but one possible view of this 
matter, and now that it was progressing so smoothly 
before their very eyes, the five good souls which had 
but one thought between them all were thoroughly 
well content with the way “the affair" was progress- 
ing. 

In spite of his slumberous attitude Dolly was himself 
pondering the same subject at that moment. It made 
his heart throb so vigorously that he verily believed 
Jeanne could have seen it if she had only once let her 
eyes wander from the book on her lap to the front of 
his white merino shirt. 

Impatience got the better of his nervousness pres- 
ently ; of course it was an awfully presumptuous thing 
he was about to do. But why not put it to the test at 
once and win or lose it all ? 

He yawned politely and purposely. 

Jeanne's soft droning, that had suggested bees in a 
buckwheat patch to Dolly’s irreverent imagination, im- 
mediately ceased. She closed the book with a snap. 

“ You are trying,’' she said, crisply. “I waste my 
time in daily efforts to raise you to the mental pitch of 
enjoying ‘Lucille,' and all my reward is a succession of 
unblushing yawns. " 


20 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


^‘I am tired,” said Dolly, humbly. *^You gave me 
an awful tussle for that last game. Two such victories 
would about do me up.” 

“ It was a close game,” said Jeanne, glancing proudly 
towards the deserted tennis-court, “but I don’t mean 
you shall have any more victories of any sort. I am a 
little out of practice as yet. As you are tired of my 
reading, shall we go to the house ? But I must say you 
might be willing to spend one little half-hour of each day 
improving your mind.” 

“ I haven’t got any mind to improve. It’s a sheer 
waste of time and goodness on your part. No, don’t 
go to the house just yet, please. I haven’t shown you 
that glimpse of the river which I consider so particu- 
larly fine. This way, please.” 

He had sprung nimbly to his feet at the first hint of 
her intention to go back to the house. Jeanne was will- 
ing enough to follow his guidance along the narrow 
pathway which soon hid them from the women on the 
veranda. It seemed a shame to waste such hours 
under a roof. Then approving smiles were bestowed 
impartially upon Dolly’s broad back and the blue flannel 
basque of Jeanne’s Tuxedo tennis suit, before they were 
ingulfed in the thick greenery that bordered the tennis- 
court 

“Now, then, isn’t that worth the walk .? And here’s 
a seat all waiting for you. ” 

Dolly had brought her far away from the eyes on the 
veranda. He, knew that they were all fixed on him, 
and whether they could hear his words or not, it was 
almost like asking Jeanne to marry him in full family 
conclave. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


I2I 


Jeanne was quite as enthusiastic over the landscape 
he loved a:s his heart could desire. 

Chilternhurst overlooked the Hudson. In Mr. Chil- 
tern’s day it had been one of the show places of the 
county, and although, since his day, under the feebler 
rule of his wife, it may have lost some of its smartness, 
nothing could ever rob it of its God-given beauties. 

In long, clear stretches, far below the wooded height 
which Dolly had brought her to, Jeanne saw the shin- 
ing river. Just below, yonder, spread the Tappan Zee, 
like a glittering armlet of the sea ; across, on the other 
side, were the wooded hills, growing blue and hazy in 
the distance. Below were white sails, drifting lazily 
hither and thither. Jeanne sat with her little hands 
folded in her lap, drinking it all in, in silent enjoyment. 

Dolly stood leaning against the tree which helped 
support the bench she was sitting on. 

He wished he could recall some of the many form- 
ulas he had prepared for this identical emergency. It 
seemed to him that he had been laboring all his life to 
ask Jeanne Lenox to become his wife, so far with very 
meagre success. He could not think of a word that did 
not sound like “infernal nonsense.'’ 

There was a rush and a whirr ! An express train 
dashed into and out of sight there below them on the 
track, laid close by the waters edge. Jeanne started 
as if from sleep. 

“That spoils it all,” she said, almost crossly. “I 
was imagining the most lovely things.” 

“ So was I,” said Dolly, with an awkward earnestness 
that made Jeanne push her big straw hat far back on 
her head, so that she could look up at him inquir- 
ingly. 


122 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


‘'But it all must be so perfectly familiar to you. 
You’ve been seeing it this way every summer of your 
life.” 

“Not this way.” 

She dropped her eyes before something unmistakable 
she saw in his. Could it be possible that the foolish 
boy was going to spoil her nice country visit by getting 
sentimental ? He just shouldn’t. That was all there 
was to it. 

“Not this way.? Oh, I remember, Mrs. Chiltern 
told me she had been cutting out some fresh vistas. 
What is that delicious little old stone house, there, at 
the water’s edge, with the red vines and the gray 
mosses running all over it .? ” 

“ Mother calls it her boat-house. I call it the tramp s 
summer resort. Generally half-a-dozen of them lodge 
there every night,” says Dolly, sulkily. 

“On beds ? ” 

“No, I guess not.” 

“ Poor things ! ” 

“Who?” Dolly laughed nervously. He was per- 
fectly conscious that she was making talk ; but wasn’t 
that rather a favorable sign ? 

“The tramps,” said Jeanne, tenderly. “ I do feel 
so sorry for them. Every man’s hand against them, 
don’t you know.” . 

A shrill human whistle came to them just then from 
somewhere in the rear of the bench Jeanne was sitting 
upon. She sprang up with a scream. 

“What is it ? Snakes? ” Dolly was all concern. 

“No. I thought — how do you know that wasn’t one 
of those horrid wretches ? ” 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


123 

“Which horrid wretches ? ” Dolly asked, ungrammat- 
ically. 

“Tramps! Didn't you say the place teemed with 
them } " 

“ I think not. And if I did, there are eight or nine 
gardeners always in some part of the grounds. You 
are perfectly safe here in daytime, and — oh. Miss Lenox 
— I wish — " 

Jeanne glanced around her furtively. The whistling, 
which had at first sounded so piercingly close at hand, 
was still distinctly audible, but it came to them some- 
what softened now by distance. She rose and motioned 
him to pick up “ Lucille," which had fallen under the 
bench. 

She would see to it, she said to herself, angrily, that 
they were not left alone again, as long as she was here. 
The silly, silly boy 1 

She held out her hand for the book. Dolly took 
hand and book both, into firm but gentle possession. 

“Won’t you let me tell you what I wish.?’’ he 
asked. 

“I suppose you wish I wasn’t such a coward. But 
I am. Papa says I am ready to go into hysterics at 
sight of a mouse. Florence — that’s my maid — I wouldn’t 
bring her out here because she would have spoiled my 
visit. She is a tyrant. I hate her. She is one of the 
things I am most afraid of in this world. Oh, there’s 
no end of things that I am afraid of I’m sorry, but 
our nice walk is all spoiled. And I’m dreadfully 
hungry, too. ’’ 

Dolly listened to her in amazement. When ever 
before had he known her to give such loose rein to 


124 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


her tongue ? Then the light of a new-born intelligence 
dawned in his face. Perhaps he was one of the things 
she was afraid of. He was a brute to try to take 
advantage of her in this fashion. He released hand 
and book gently. He wished he could put all his 
contrition into words. 

He dropped quietly into place by her side and was 
about to enter into a comprehensive dissertation on the 
habits and habitat of the genus tramp, when that dis- 
turbing whistle sounded so directly in the path behind 
them that he wheeled suddenly, angrily-minded to put 
a stop to this impertinence. 

Some laurel bushes parted on one side the narrow 
path. A man’s hat came into view, then his shoulders, 
and in a second more Randall Mackaye was lifting 
his hat to Miss Lenox, while shaking Dolly by the 
hand with the most effusive pleasure. 

“Mrs. Chiltern was kind enough to give me permis- 
sion to hunt you up. I was to tell you luncheon had 
been waiting an eternity.” 

Dolly went through the ceremony of introducing 
his friend to Miss Lenox. 

“I have met Mr. Mackaye before — several times,” 
said Jeanne; “in fact, we are quite old friends.” And 
she put a fluttering little hand into Randall’s. 

It was calmly enough said, but Dolly wondered a 
little why he had not known it before — and why was 
Jeanne dropping her eyes and blushing so furiously ? 

Jeanne had taken position between the two men, and 
the three were moving towards the house. Dolly was 
conscious of a certain lack of inward cordiality in his 
reception of his guest, which he was generously- 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


25 


minded to do away with. He leaned forward to say, 
across Jeanne’s big hat : 

“ It was real good of you to come, Mackaye, busy 
man as you are. Mother told me she had written you 
herself, but I hadn’t heard the result.” 

“No. I found Mrs. Chiltern with my note in her 
lap. I followed it out on an earlier train than I had 
named.” 

“That accounts for my ignorance. I would have 
met you at the train.” The last remnant of stiffness 
dissolved in a sudden burst of gay laughter, that 
bubbled straight up from Dolly’s light heart. 

“ Miss Lenox, may I tell him ? ” 

“Tell him what.^ ” Jeanne asked, looking him threat- 
eningly in the eyes. 

“ How he frightened you.” 

“You are a foolish boy, and I am going to tell your 
mother, your two aunts, and your two sisters on you.” 

Jeanne had discovered Adolphus’ sore spot, and 
pressed it with truly feminine malice. 

“How was I so unfortunate as to frighten Miss 
Lenox .? ” Randall asked, modulating his voice to a tone 
of personal inquiry. 

He could not see her face for the big hat that shaded 
it, but he was looking down upon the full, white throat 
left bare by the low, rolling collar of her tennis-suit, 
and he could see its agitated swell. 

Whatever that handsome boy on the other side of 
her had been saying to her, as they sat there overlook- 
ing his ancestral acres, Jeanne, his little Jeanne, who 
had given him her heart entirely unasked, was true to 
him so far. 


126 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


Thus the egotist to himself. 

“You did not frighten me at all/’ said Jeanne, with 
uncalled-for asperity. “ We had been talking about 
tramps and things, and your whistling sounded start- 
lingly near at first, then it died away, and then it came 
nearer. ” 

“ Yes,” said Randall ; “it took me quite a little while 
to find you. Your paths are really labyrinthine, 'Chil- 
tern. ” 

“Slightly sinuous. I believe, as a rule, there is a 
crookedness in a gardener’s perceptions of the beautiful 
which, fortunately, is not shared by everybody. ” 

He answered at random. He was troubled by a 
vague unrest. Something mystified him. Why had 
Jeanne’s mood changed so suddenly from the most 
delightful appreciation of all the pleasant things about 
her, to an exasperating touchiness which he did not 
know how to meet .? And what was there lacking in 
Mackaye’s manner towards Jeanne, which he, Dolly, 
found so irritating ? Was it a lack of reverence ? 

Dolly was not good at conundrums. He gave this 
one up presently, with a sharp mental reprimand of 
himself. 

He was all out of kilter because his wooing of Jeanne 
had gone awry. Mackaye was all right. Jeanne was 
all right. The beam was in his own eye. 

And Jeanne Lenox? Ignorant, blind Jeanne Lenox 
walked houseward between the two men, timidly 
reverencing Randall Mackaye and rejoicing over his 
advent; while for Adolphus Chiltern she could find 
nothing in her heart but a repetition of her resolve 
that her “visit should not be spoiled by that foolish, 
foolish boy.” 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


27 


CHAPTER XIII. 

The room that Randall Mackaye occupied on that 
sultry June night presented a curious contrast to the 
one which was then sheltering Marianne, his wife. 

Randall’s was a big square upper chamber, selected 
for him by Mrs. Chiltern and the girls, “ on account of 
the charming views to be seen from any one of its win- 
dows.” Its ceiling was lofty and its windows were gen- 
erous. From heavy gilt cornices embroidered curtains 
of the finest muslin swayed in the night breeze. 

All around him pale-blue damask upholstery invited 
to repose. Across the foot of his bed a white-silk eider- 
down quilt lay folded. There were brackets full of new 
books on his table, and low-hung pictures challenged 
his criticism or admiration at every turn. 

There was no possibility of ennui, unless, indeed, the 
occupant of this goodly apartment had long been 
satiated with luxury, which was not the case with Ran- 
dall Mackaye. 

He had never yet had his proper share of this sort 
of thing, he thought. 

He placed one of the big blue chairs in front of one 
of the generous windows, where he could look out upon 
a moon-flooded world — a quiet, noiseless, clean world, 
where the soft rustle of innumerable leaves, and the 


128 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


sleepy twitter of a disturbed nestling close by, fell 
soothingly on ears fresh from the unholy rattle of the 
stony city. 

He had some hard thinking to do that night ; some 
thinking on a subject of considerable importance. He 
had promised to evolve an entirely original plan for a 
lawn party, which Mrs. Chiltern and “the girls” had 
suddenly agreed upon at the dinner-table as “some- 
thing to do. ” 

“We want our garden tea to be something altogether 
unique, Mr. Mackaye,” Dolly’s youngest sister had said, 
with nervously clasped hands. “Do think up some- 
thing for us. I know your artistic intuitions will sug- 
gest something no one ever dreamed of before.” 

And the oracle had promised to deliver itself the next 
morning at the breakfast-table. 

His “artistic intuitions” suggested to him, as he sat 
there with his arms folded on the window-sill, looking 
for inspiration, now at the blue-black vault of the sky 
over him, with its far-scattered stars, now at the silvery 
reaches of the Hudson, seen through lapses in the thick 
trees, that he could evolve better if he only dared smoke 
a cigarette in that pure, virginal apartment ; but he did 
not dare. 

Dolly had escorted him as far as the stables after 
dinner, with a laughing apology and some half-vexed 
protests against “a woman's prejudice multiplied by 
five. ” There, out of sight and sound of the house, they 
had smoked their cigars in peace, and then they had 
walked slowly back to the house, trusting to deliberation 
and the open air to secure them against detection. 

In spite of this slight sacrifice to a “woman’s preju- 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


129 

dice, ” this, his first evening at Chilternhurst, had been a 
thoroughly enjoyable one. 

Women with soft, cultured voices — daintily-garbed 
women, who exhaled suggestions of luxury and good- 
breeding — had surrounded him onthe vine-clad veranda, 
plying him with charmingly ignorant questions touch- 
ing his art, which was to them so awe-inspiring. They 
made him the central object of endless little attentions, 
and spoke sweetly of his growing fame and his brilliant 
future. It flattered him and soothed a certain inward 
smart which was ever present -with him. 

It all came back to him as he sat there trying to think 
up something absolutely original for the Chiltern garden 
party. But the pretty prattle of Mrs. Chiltern’s girl guests, 
divested of their own charming personality, sounded 
weak and empty. With a sudden wrench memory 
forced him backward to the last visit he had paid to one 
of these luxurious country homes, and that disastrous 
talk with Marianne when he got home. 

“It was an accursed display of bad temper on her 
part. I would like to stop thinking of her altogether. 
She has spoiled my past for me ; she shall not spoil the 
present, nor the future.” 

He sprang to his feet with such impetuosity as to 
send Mrs. Chiltern’s blue-damask arm-chair rolling 
away from him on its smooth castors. 

“After all” — he was disrobing for bed — “ Dolly has 
gotten together a deucedly vapid set of women. If 
Marianne had a better temper, and knew how to dress 
herself, I wouldn’t be ashamed of her among the best 
of them.” 

It was not until after his first nap, when he awoke 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


*30 

feeling chilly, and had drawn the silken coverlet up over 
him, that his mind again reverted to the garden party, 
which he was expected to map out, on a plan altogether 
novel, by breakfast-time the next morning. 

By breakfast-time the next morning, not that leisurely 
come-when-you-please meal which was such a charm- 
ing exception to Mrs. Chiltern’s otherwise rather rigid 
code, but by the half-past seven o’clock breakfast hour 
which holds good among the working bees in this big 
human hive of ours, and which was always clamorously 
announced by a half-grown bell in Marianne’s lodging- 
house, she had already made neat the small room 
where she had taken refuge, and was at work with her 
brush. 

The clamorous bell had no claims to her attention. 
She was only a lodger — a quiet, soft-voiced lodger, 
who came in and went out with square packages done 
up in light-yellow paper, which everybody who knew 
anything at all about her knew to be pictures going to 
the paint shop, but whom nobody questioned. When or 
how or on what she sustained life no one but herself 
knew or cared. She knew as little, in her turn, about 
the other human beings under the same roof with her. 
She knew that her landlady was a fashionable dress- 
maker, with no end of people of her own — sisters and 
nephews and nieces, all in some sort of business 
which fully occupied them. 

That was what she liked about this house. There 
were no boarding-house gossips to be prying into 
her life ; no one to come and “ sit awhile” in the little 
room under the roof, at the back of the house, to which 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


31 


she climbed laboriously after every exit, and for which 
she paid the moderate sum of four dollars per week. 

She could have wished that the one window was 
larger, and the outlook more inspiring. But she was 
not exacting of Fate. There was a good deal she would 
have liked to have different. Those mammoth yellow 
letters, in which the virtues of Castoria were perma- 
nently set forth against a rusty black surface, were 
trials to the flesh, from which she was only partially 
exempt when the huge yellow letters grew dim under 
the shadows of the night, but the towering brick houses 
still encircled and stifled her. 

There was the low, flat tin roof, to which she could 
escape through the trap-door when life became abso- 
lutely insupportable in her stuffy little room. And the 
moon, which on that night gave to Randall Mackaye 
soft, silvery reaches of the Hudson River, and white, 
gleaming, rustling poplar leaves, gave to her the clus- 
tered roofs and the heavenward-pointed steeples of the 
sweltering city. 

She was glad that no one of the landlady’s big family 
ever cared to climb to the roof. It was her domain, 
and many an hour she paced from cornice to rear with 
nothing but the starlit heavens over her, with the roar 
of the city coming to her in a subdued murmur, asking 
herself insistently over and over again, if she had done 
the right thing by her husband ; and always — always 
came back the answer evolved from a pure heart and a 
clear conscience : ‘'Yes. Tf I stood in the way of his 
God-given talents I should have stepped aside and left 
him unhampered. A year will tell whether or not — he 
— needs me. He said I hampered him.” 


I32 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


It was this absolute and habitual isolation from all 
social claims which perhaps made Marianne turn with 
a start of almost rude surprise at the somewhat gusty 
entrance of her landlady, towards dusk of the next day. 

“ Tm so glad to find you in, Mrs. Fawcett ; you 
won’t mind my sitting down. Fm all out of breath, 
and all out of temper, too. How perfectly lovely your 
room does look ! ” 

Marianne smiled patiently. She did not share the 
good woman’s enthusiasm over her retreat, but as she 
had been tenderly ministered to by this panting 
creature, in a short but acute visitation of pain, her 
feelings were altogether kindly. 

“Can I do anything for you, Mrs. Roper.?” she 
asked, politely, laying down the book she was reading. 

“You can. I’m in a peck of trouble. Read that, 
will you ? ” 

Mrs. Roper’s manner was emphatic. She laid a 
crumpled telegram in Marianne’s lap. The telegram 
stated peremptorily that Mrs. Roper must hold herself in 
readiness to prepare a costume at two days’ notice, for 
a garden party, at which the wearer was to represent 
mountain laurel. She must design it at once, and the 
young lady would be in the next morning to be fitted. 

The telegram was signed “Jeanne Lenox.” 

Marianne read it and laid it back in Mrs. Roper’s lap. 
She was at a loss to understand the consternation it 
had created. 

“Well!” 

Mrs. Roper twisted the unoffending bit of paper 
viciously about in her fingers. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


133 

“ As if I knew anything on earth about laurel moun- 
tain — ” 

“ Mountain laurel,’’ Marianne said, putting her right, 
botanically. 

“ And my designer off on her vacation ! 

“Then why don’t you telegraph back that you can’t 
do it ? ” 

“Can’t do it ! Did you see the signature ?” 

“Yes. I saw it was signed Jeanne Lenox.” 

“And that stands for several thousand dollars every 
year to me. I must do it. If she was to come here 
to-morrow and find I hadn’t even made a stagger at it, 
do you know what she would do ? ” 

“I haven’t the remotest idea,” said Marianne, in- 
wardly wondering why this perplexed soul should 
have selected her as a despositary of her anxieties. 

“Why she would simply walk ‘over to Greenleaf, 
and I should be ruined. She is a nice girl when every- 
thing goes to suit her ; but my ! she is pugnacious when 
it don’t. She’s spoilt, you see. Only child. Father 
no end of money. French maid, all claws and eyes, 
for trainer. ” 

“ Poor child ! I am sorry for her. I expect ” 

Mrs. Roper interrupted her savagely : 

“You will be ^orry for me this time to-morrow if that 
laurel mountain dress isn’t designed. What do I know 
about laurels and mountains .? — me that never slept a 
night out of New York City, except when I was on the 
other side buying goods in Paris } Dear Mrs. Fawcett ! 

With the most sudden transition from white heat to 
beseeching humility Mrs. Roper clasped her thin, work- 
worn hands and looked at Marianne with a great long- 
ing in her faded eyes. 


134 


A SPLEJSTDID EGOTIST. 


“ You do paint so beautifully. Such lovely fruit and 
flower pieces ! I declare your lemons put my teeth on 
edge, and I always feel like biting your water-melons.” 

Marianne returned thanks politely for this unstinted 
praise. Mrs. Roper resumed breathlessly : 

“ And_yo« must have seen this laurel nonsense some- 
time in your life. Wouldn’t you, oh, wouldn’t you, 
my dear Mrs. Fawcett.? I know it is a step down, 
artistically speaking — but — if you only would design 
Miss Lenox’s costume for me ! ” 

“But the young lady might not like my design. It 
is sure not to be conventional.” 

“Precisely! Exactly I You couldn’t have said a 
better thing. Just design something entirely unlike 
anything that ever was heard of before, and Miss 
Lenox will go wild with delight. Oh, I will pay you 
anything you ask — that is — provided, of course — any- 
thing in reason.” 

“ I shan’t ask you anything,” said Marianne, curtly. 
“ This is not my line of work ; but you have been very 
good to me, and if I can save a valuable customer to 
you I shall be glad to do it.” 

“You are an angel. I always knew you were. 
Valuable — I should say she was. Miss Lenox is worth 
a clear five thousand a year to me, and I will never, 
never allow my designer to leave my side again, no — ” 
most emphatically — “ not unless it is to attend her own 
funeral.” 

Mrs. Roper went downstairs with her heart lightened 
of an immense load, and Marianne laid aside her book 
to design a costume for Jeanne Lenox which should 
unmistakably and in every detail suggest the delicate 
beauty of the mountain laurel. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


35 


“That was an inspiration of yours,” said Jeanne 
Lenox, turning to Randall with glowing cheeks and 
bright eyes. “Now if Roper only has the sense to 
execute it properly ! Oh, we are so charmed ! ” 

Pretty much the same thing had been said to him by 
Mrs. Chiltern, her two sisters, her two daughters, and 
live other girls. His inspiration had been the suggest- 
ion that each table set upon Mrs. Chiltern’s lawn should 
stand for a certain flower ; and from the gay canopy 
which sheltered it, down to the costuming of the guests 
who sat at it, the supremacy of the emblem was to be 
observed. 

The idea was declared to be altogether perfect, and 
the hours of preparation flew on winged feet. Jeanne 
had even gone the length of securing a little private 
advice from the hero of the day. 

“You know pink is adorably becoming to me,” she 
said, lifting bright, anxious eyes to his face. 

“Then why not be mountain Haurel .? ” he had re- 
turned, promptly. 

“That is an inspiration,” Jeanne had said, rapu- 
rously, before rushing off to send her telegram to 
Roper. 

“That is an inspiration,” Mrs. Roper said to Mari- 
anne, leaning rapturously over the table upon which 
her lodger was displaying the perfected design. Then 
she, too, sent a telegram : ‘ ‘ Design ready. Come when 
you please,” after despatching which she turned sol- 
emnly to Marianne : “You have saved m-e ! ” 


136 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

“She don’t like it ! Says she can’t see any sense in 
it. I am ruined ! ” 

Mrs. Roper burst in upon her lodger the next morn- 
ing with this desperate declaration, just as Marianne 
had laid down her brush and was filling a small copper 
tea-kettle in preparation for her noonday cup of tea. 

“Don’t see any sense in it ! ” 

As long as she had stooped to the designing of a 
costume, Marianne did not propose to have it under- 
rated in any such fashion. 

“ No ; says she can’t make head nor tail of it. She’s 
downstairs now, wringing her hands and going on — ” 
Mrs. Roper was quite breathless from excitement and 
climbing. She was the picture of dishevelled despair. 

“Then it is because she has no head of her own,” 
said Marianne, calmly proceeding to light the gas and 
balance the tea-kettle on its tripod. 

“ That is what I told her — no — not exactly — I declare 
I am that upset that I believe I have lost my own head. 
I told her if she could have it described to her by my 
designer (dear Mrs. Fawcett, we people in business 
have to tell lies sometimes), who was an accomplished 
artist — that was no lie — I was quite sure she would see 
that the design was both unique and lovely.” 

“Why don’t you describe it to her ?” 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


137 

“ I have, over and over again. But, you see, I can 
only execute. I always make Henriette do the talking, 
and Henriette is off on that dreadful vacation. ” 

Marianne, looking into the anxious face before her, 
and taking pitiful note of the nervous twitching in the 
work-worn fingers which had performed many a kindly 
office for her, slowly untied her painter's pinafore, and 
smoothing her rumpled hair down with her hands, said 
quietly : 

“I will go down with you, Mrs. Roper. I am sure, 
unless the young lady is very unreasonable or entirely 
lacking in taste, we can make her like that design.” 

But she did not go down with Mrs. Roper. . Mrs. 
Roper flung herself out of the room with a gurgle of 
rapturous gratitude, and was back in Jeanne's presence 
long enough to say with calm dignity, “I have sum- 
moned my designer,” before Marianne, moving at her 
usual gait, had reached the door of the reception room. 

Jeanne was sitting with her back to the door, facing 
a confused mass of pink tissue paper, spread out on a 
divan before her. Her hands were folded over the 
parasol that lay across her lap, and her eyes were fixed 
gloomily on that mystifying heap of loose patterns. 
She glanced up with surprise as a soft, cultured voice 
broke in upon her sombre reflections. 

She had just been saying to herself that life could 
hold no greater calamity than to fail in carrying out 
Randall's beautiful conceptions for this garden-party. 
It was not at all as if it were an ordinary tea. There 
was poetry in this idea ! 

“Mrs. Roper tells me that you are not quite satisfied 
with the design for your costume.” 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


138 

“Quite satisfied? Not at all satisfied ! My dear crea- 
ture, it is positively mystifying, not to say absurd. Can 
anybody find mountain laurel in that heap ? ” 

Jeanne laughed recklessly and pointed her parasol at 
the heap as if she should like very much to punch a hole 
through the mass. Then she stood up, impelled to this 
unusual concession by the stately dignity of the woman 
before her. 

Mrs. Roper also did an unusual thing at this junc- 
ture. She introduced her designer to her customer. 

“Mrs. Fawcett — Miss Lenox. It is so much more 
comfortable, you know, to be able to call names.” 

This lucid but well-meant remark was entirely thrown 
away on Marianne and on Jeanne. At sound of that 
light, reckless laugh, Marianne had turned her eyes for 
the first time full upon the customer. Before then she 
had taken her in simply as an adjunct to the pink tissue 
paper on the lounge. 

What a malicious trick fate had played her ! There 
was no doubt about it. This girl and the one whom 
she had sent away from Randalls studio with baffled 
curiosity that day were one and the same ! She had 
almost forgotten her, forgotten her in the graver issues 
that had come into her life so immediately after that 
morning’s experience. She had no fear of her husband’s 
going very far in that direction. This girl was simply 
an exponent of the luxuries he loved and sought. 

He was exacting and selfish. This girl would be exact- 
ing too. Randall would have to minister to her. He 
would never minister to anyone. He was quite incapable 
of that patient, enduring affection which would carry him 
over and beyond her harmless, pretty little tyrannies to 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


139 

Llie sweetness that, no doubt, permeated the innermost 
recesses of this spoilt child’s soul. 

All this while with her deft fingers she was manipu- 
lating the crumpled pink patterns, until there seemed 
to burst upon Jeanne’s delighted vision the exquisite 
tints and outlines of the clustering laurel she meant to 
symbolize. 

“Now do you see it ” Mrs. Roper cried, in triumph, 
while Marianne was still silently twisting the crumpled 
petals in her long white fingers. 

“See it .? It is divine ! Oh, you angel ! — you are an 
artist---you are ” 

Her eyes travelled beyond Marianne towards the 
door. There was a rustle of silk ! an explosion of 
kisses ! a cataract of expletives ! then Jeanne, dragging 
by their hands two newly-arrived customers, brought 
them up before the sofa with a triumphant nod of her 
little head : 

“ Look at that and tell me what you think of it ! ” 

They thought it was “divine,” “lovely,” “exquisite,” 
“just perfect ” — but what was it for 1 

“For a garden-party at Mrs. Chiltern’s. I’m out there 
for two weeks. Then we are going to Bar Harbor. 
Papa does talk a little about Europe, but that is only 
in case somebody does something or don’t do anything 
about some railroad stock he is interested in. I never 
do get it right.” 

All three of these favored ones of fortune, however, 
found Jeanne’s costume more interesting than the vague 
possibility of somebody’s doing or not doing something 
to Mr. Lenox’s stock. 

“But what is to be the material? ” 


140 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


“What? Mrs. Fawcett, I hadn’t asked yet. 

“Pink crepe. It has the desired crimp,” said Mari- 
anne, slowly turning the model about before laying it 
down. 

She had done her duty and vindicated her design. 
She was ready to return now, but an imploring look 
from Mrs. Roper, sent across Jeanne's shoulders, kept 
her standing with the model still in her hand. They 
were all standing, Jeanne, the picture of content now, 
occasionally executing little sighs of relief as she patted 
or picked at the tissue paper. 

“You must have something unique on hand out there 
as well as here. You know we were invited, but being 
in mourning — ” 

“Yes, I know,” said Jeanne, assuming a fleeting ex- 
pression of acute sympathy. ‘‘ Your poor dear uncle — 
but he was so old — must have been a relief. Yes, in- 
deed — we have something unique. Think of a garden 
tea, where each table represents a certain flower. There 
are to be big canopies over each table showing just 
what flower it represents. Poppies, sunflowers, moun- 
tain laurel, and — and — ” 

“ I suppose you can outrage nature with perfect im- 
punity — make spring and summer and autumn flowers 
all bloom at once, if you choose .? ” 

“Yes, I suppose so” — Jeanne was dubious on the 
score of nature, but quite positive in the realm of dry- 
goods. 

“Who is the originator of this unique idea.? ” 

“This .?” — pointing to the model. 

“No, Mrs. Chiltern’s garden-party. ” 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


141 

“Oh, a gentleman who is there on a visit. You have 
heard of him. Mr. Randall Mackaye.” 

The pink paper model of Miss Lenox’s costume fell, 
with a soft rustle, from the designer’s hand, upon the 
divan. The designer turned her back upon the group 
and busied her trembling fingers with the frail garment. 

“ Mackaye, the sculptor.? ” 

“Yes, of course you know him. He goes every- 
where. ” 

“ I have met him. The men say he could do great 
things if he chose to buckle down to work. He has it 
in him. The talent, I mean — not the work.” 

“ He is going to do great things,” said Jeanne, with 
a metallic ring in her voice, that sounded queer to 
one pair of ears within hearing of it. “ Papa says he 
has an unfinished statue in his studio which will place 
him in the front ranks of American artists when it is 
finished.” 

“.^it is finished, you had as well say. That means, 
if you women don’t turn his head so completely as to 
spoil him for work. He is a handsome fellow and an 
entertaining one ; we all admit that. ' Well, Mrs. Roper, 
is there any chance for us alongside of Jeanne and her 
mountain laurel .? ” 

Marianne laid the model carefully down. She had 
stood there as long as she would or could. But she 
was glad she had heard this childish prattle. She 
mounted the steps to her room with a fast-beating heart. 

Yes, she repeated, with a sort of fierce denial of an 
inward protest — glad! Was it not in order that he 
should have perfect freedom to live the life best suited 
to the development of his art tendencies that she had 


142 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


effaced herself? And should she complain now, if she 
heard of him as luxuriating in the soft places, surrounded 
by the people and the things best calculated to nourish 
his voluptuous nature ? And yet, there was a fierce 
protest coming uppermost — it would be heard. She 
crushed in her hands the rough draughts of the model 
she had left downstairs and flung them into the grate. 

^‘Wasitfor that sort of* thing she had left him un- 
hampered ; was that the best use he could make of his 
luxurious freedom ?-— his great talents ? ’’ 

To her, reared in an atmosphere of reverence for art, 
it had seemed almost a crime to stand in the way of its 
fullest development in her husband. He had said, in 
that bitter interview, every word of which was burned 
into her memory, that he “must make his flights on 
clipped wings,’' and she had felt like the worst of cul- 
prits, for had not she clipped his wings when she mar- 
ried him ? 

He had been very dear to her, this splendid egotist. 
She had been hovering over him, caring for him, min- 
istering to his comfort through all the years of his early 
tutelage to her father, when he had formed one of their 
little family circle. To some natures — strong, sweet, 
pure natures — the element of care-taking serves to in- 
tensify affection. K was so with Marianne. If she had 
been a mother she would have obliterated herself en- 
tirely for her children ; unwisely, but thoroughly. The 
necessity of sacrifice is a condition of existence with 
such natures. 

If this experiment of hers should result in Randalls 
final instalment in that niche which was surely waiting 
for him in the temple of Fame, she would be justified. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


143 


If, on the other hand, it taught him how necessary she 
was to him, she would still be justified. So either way 
it was well. 

“I must give his clipped wings time to grow,” she 
said, turning back to her own work with a wan smile on 
her lips, but resolution in her heart. 

The sudden break in the formality of her relations 
with Mrs. Roper, as lodger and landlady threatened to 
have consequences. 

When the full flower of her designing was ready for 
exhibition 'Mrs. Roper appeared again within Marianne's 
door. The small room could scarcely accommodate 
the big pasteboard box in which Jeanne’s costume was 
about to be expressed to Chilternhurst. 

“ I thought you would like to see it before it left the 
holise,” said Mrs. Roper, kneeling before the big paste- 
board box and lifting the costume with reverent hands 
for Marianne’s inspection. 

“You could make your fortune as a designer,” she 
said, enthusiastically, kneeling again to replace the gauzy 
garment with precision. “ I wish you would think 
of it.” 

‘ ‘ I think my own work suits me best, ” said Marianne ; 
then quickly, for fear she had seemed to look down 
upon Mrs. Roper’s line of art, “I am afraid of fashion- 
able young ladies.” 

Mrs. Roper rose from her knees, twisting a small 
bit of twine, left over from tying the box, between 
her fingers. 

“ I am sorely tempted to tell you something,” she 
said, looking reflectively into Marianne’s face. “You 


144 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


don’t seem to know anybody, and I do believe you 
are discreet. ” 

Marianne’s heart was beating furiously, but she looked 
calmly in Mrs. Roper’s face as that lady resumed : 

It just goes to show what an all-sorts of a world this 
is. After Miss Lenox went away, which she did about 
five minutes after you left the room, those other two 
got to talking about her, as women will, you know, be- 
hind each other’s backs. The best of them will.” 
“Well.?” 

“And Mrs. Becks said (of course I wouldn’t talk this 
way to anybody but you, Mrs. Fawcett) that Miss 
Lenox was just making a fool of herself about Randall 
Mackaye, and he didn’t care anything more for her than 
he did for — I don’t know what her comparison was. 
But — I’m not so sure about that. ” 

“Well, what have you or I to do with it .? ” Marianne 
asked, in a voice she had never seemed to hear before. 

“Not much. But — well — Ran is my brother, that is 
all. Not that I would ever bother him, even if he was 
to become Jerome Lenox’s son-in-law to-morrow.^’ 
“Randall Mackaye your brother .? ” 

“My brother. Is that so hard to believe .? He is a 
good deal younger than I am. I wasn’t married when 
father died. Mother died when Ran was a handsome 
little chap in kilt skirts. I always took care of him. 
Mother made me promise I would look out for him 
always. Then, when father died — as I was engaged to 
be married to Mr. Roper, who was in a good business, 
and able to look out for me — I gave Ran the three hun- 
dred dollars that was all we had left after father’s funeral, 
and told him it was to give him a start in life. He took 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


45 


it — the start, I mean — and it wasn’t long before he 
walked clean out of my life. I think he sort of looked 
down on Mr. Roper because he was a merchant tailor, 
you know. Ran always was a high-flyer, but as long 
as he needed me I was willing to overlook his non- 
sense. If he needed me this minute Td go to him. 
That I would.” 

Marianne looked at her with shining eyes. What a 
queer bond of sympathy had suddenly been established 
between her and this plain, elderly working-woman, the 
widow of a merchant tailor apd the lister of her hus- 
band ! 

“And you have known nothing of your brothers life 
since he left you .? 

“ Precious little ! You know its easy enough to lose 
sight of a body right here in this town. We heard he 
was working under an old portrait-painter somewhere 
in Newark, Brooklyn, or Hoboken. Then I did hear 
that he was married, but I know that ain’t so, for 
some time back I was hurrying through Washington 
Square, late, getting back from carrying a dress home 
myself (an awful fractious customer at the New York 
Hotel : I always put her dresses on and fasten them up 
myself), and I saw him sitting on a bench, dressed in 
full evening dress, smoking a cigar ; and there was a 
big bouquet of roses on the bench by him. I knew 
him the minute I laid eyes on him.” 

“How does all that prove him unmarried.?” 

“Oh, well, he didn’t look married, you know. Be- 
sides, this talk downstairs shows I’m right. If he is 
flying around Miss Lenox he can’t have a wife any- 
where, Ran isn’t that sort of a scamp, He’s selflsh. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


146 

He was born selfish, and I think maybe I helped to make 
him more so — always putting myself out of the way for 
him, you know ; but Ran is a gentleman. He never 
would play a mean trick on a woman — never ! " 

She was gathering up her things for descent. Mari- 
anne had listened in unbroken silence towards the last. 
Mrs. Roper’s politeness suggested an apology : 

“I don’t know what I’ve bored you with this bit of 
family history for, but it is a comfort to open your heart 
to a woman. Don’t you think so .? And I know you 
are discreet. If Randall can climb to the very top- 
most rung of the ladder, he can climb without any fear 
of me putting a block in his way ; only ” — and Mrs. 
Roper laughed a short, withered sort of laugh — “ it did 
strike me as comical to hear of him as a beau of Miss 
Lenox’s.” 

“Then you think — perhaps — that your brother really 
is an admirer of Miss Lenox’s ?” 

How queer that she should be able to ask such a 
question unfalteringly ! 

“Admirer ? Yes : we all admire her ; who can help it ? 
But in love with her — no. If Ran ever does come to 
love any woman it will have to be a growth with him. 
He will have to get out of and beyond himself by very 
slow degrees before he can yield his heart absolutely 
and entirely. And when he does, the surrender will not 
be made to a — ^Jeanne Lenox.” 

“To what sort of woman then ? ” 

“ To a woman stronger, better, and truer than any I 
have ever had the honor of fitting yet.” 

And without the remotest idea that she had been ad- 
ministering comfort in large measure, Mrs. Roper took 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


147 


herself downstairs once more, quite satisfied that her 
involuntary betrayal of a bit of family history had 
fallen on bored and unheeding, but discreet ears. 

“She is right — it will be the growth of a passion,” 
said Marianne, lifting her head from her folded arms, 
after the lapse of an intense half-hour. 


143 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


CHAPTER XV. 

If one could possibly imagine the sensations of a 
brilliant butterfly which, by some freak of nature, had 
been forced to resume the dingy conditions of its exist- 
ence as a grub, one might adequately measure the deep 
disgust which took entire possession of Randall Mac- 
kaye when he found himself once more installed in his 
studio, his visit to Chilternhurst at an end, ‘‘with no 
chance of another escape soon. ” 

He had gotten back from Chilternhurst late one after- 
noon, and opened his studio door with that vague sense 
of anticipation that never forsook him now. He never 
left his rooms without that feeling of expectation. 
When he came back he should find everything .straight- 
ened up, a glass of flowers in the window (Marianne 
always would have flowers about), and Marianne her- 
self sitting at her easel or her sewing machine. 

He was generally prepared with a formula for the 
occasion. He would greet her as if she had just been 
off on a visit, and make no allusion to her “tantrums.’' 
Of course, in that case, his dream of taking a position in 
metropolitan circles as Jerome Lenox’s son-in-law would 
have to be foregone, but — in case Marianne should 
obstinately refuse to acknowledge the error of her ways 
and should refuse to return to him, why — well — he did 
not propose to larnent the failure of his married life for 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


149 


always. Nor would he be in an excessive hurry to 
put his neck once more within the yoke. He meant to 
enjoy the good things of life which fate was offering 
tardily. 

But Marianne was not there when he got back from 
Mrs. Chiltern’s. There were flowers in the window, 
but it was only a mass of discolored roses, with a dark- 
brown liquid in the glass where once had been water. 
They were Mrs. Chiltern's roses. A mouse scampered 
hastily out of sight as he opened the door. It had 
been living luxuriously for a whole week ' on the 
remnants of his last lunch. The room had a close 
and musty smell. He had closed the windows in 
leaving, for in case of rain no one would have taken 
enough interest in his things to have looked after his 
windows. 

He flung the windows wide open now, scratched a 
match, and lit the gas jet immediately behind the statue. 
It was the one nearest at hand. He searched the letter- 
box, just inside the door, next. There was nothing 
there but a few tradesmen's circulars. His correspond- 
ence was not large. 

No more invitations to nice country houses ! no word 
from Marianne! It must be that “infernal statue’' 
that forced her so prominently into his mind as soon 
as he got back, he told himself angrily. He didn't 
believe it would be possible for him to spend this first 
evening alone in his studio. The contrast was too 
sharp. Here, dust, poverty, silence ; at Chilternhurst, 
light, air, luxury. 

He turned the gas jet behind the statue out with a 
quick movement. The thing was casting ghostly 


150 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


shadows across the studio. He lighted the lamp on 
the table and opened the evening paper to see what 
was going on. 

Nothing, of course ! Nothing ever did go on in the 
middle of July. Every decent body had put miles of 
land or water between them and this broiling oven, in 
which he was destined to swelter alone for several 
months to come. 

Plainly the outlook before him was not enticing. 
His acquaintance among the owners of nice country 
houses was limited as yet. He was entirely indebted 
to Dolly Chiltern for the “jolly week’' which had 
grown into two jolly weeks before the Chilternhurst 
crowd had scattered. 

The Lenoxes had gone to Bar Harbor. There was a 
strong probability that they might go to Europe some- 
time in August. Dolly Chiltern had followed them to 
Bar Harbor. 

“He may follow her to the end of the world if he 
sees fit. Dolly is not dangerous. He might be, now, 
if she were poor.” 

A disagreeably complacent look passed over Randall’s 
handsome face just at that stage of his. reverie. He was 
threading his silky side-whiskers with long muscular 
fingers, and holding the fine hairs out to their utmost 
length, as he criticised himself complacently in the 
mirror opposite. 

Dolly’s own absence from town was an added 
grievance. His devotion to Mackaye, and his insatiable 
craving for citizenship in Bohemia, had resulted in 
many an expensive treat, which Randall could not hope 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


151 

to enjoy again until Dolly was once more installed in 
his town quarters. 

“I shall have to take my choice between work and 
suicide. Which shall it be ? he asked aloud, looking 
bored and wretched. 

He laughed recklessly, and shoved the evening paper 
from him with childish petulance. It had failed to sug- 
gest any relief from boredom, and he had no further use 
for it. He plunged his face into his outstretched hands 
and sat motionless. 

The studio door opened noiselessly behind him, and 
Marianne’s father stepped into the ring of light cast by 
the shaded lamp. He glanced with surprise at the 
figure by the table, then came forward eagerly. 

“Why, Ran! You here? I’ve been making trips 
across the river ’most every day this week to see you. 
This time I was going to leave a note for you.” 

Randall had lifted his head at the sound of the old 
man’s voice. He would have welcomed the society of 
his worst enemy at that juncture. 

“I’ve just got home,” he said, shoving a chair to- 
wards his father-in-law, “and was feeling deucedly 
bored with myself already. Glad to see you. ” 

“ Got home from where, Ran ? ” 

“ From Chilternhurst. ” 

“ Chilternhurst ? Where is that? I don’t seem to be 
able to place it on the map. ” 

“It isn’t on any map. It is the name of Mrs. Chil- 
tern’s country place on the Hudson, up about Tarry- 
town. I’ve been there on a visit. ” 

“Oh 1 I thought, maybe, it was some place where 


52 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


Nan-nan might have wandered to, and you had gone 
up to coax her back home/’ 

“I shall never do that. Never, so help me ” 

Randall looked at the gentle face of the old man oppo- 
site to him, seamed and furrowed with new lines of 
care, it appeared to him, and the hand upheld to em- 
phasize his oath fell nerveless upon the table between 
them. 

“She left me of her own free will, Mr. Grayson.” 

“I know it ; I know it. She told me so herself.” 

“ Then she did go to you .? ” 

“ I found her there when I went back from here. She 
staid that night with me.” 

“Where is she now } ” 

“ I do not know.” 

Randall searched his face carefully. 

“ I do not know, Randall. I think I was a little hard 
on Nan-nan that night. I scolded her. I thought, you 
know, she would expect me to see only her side.” 

“And didn’t she .? ” 

“This don’t look much like it. She left this behind 
her, and I was going to leave it here for you. I thought, 
maybe, if you were still thinking hard thoughts of your 
wife, this would crush them all out. It ought to, Ran- 
dall.” 

He was tearing open a sealed envelope he had held 
in his hand all this time. His fingers trembled over the 
simple task, and his breathing was audible. 

“This is what Nan-nan left behind her, Randall.” 

He laid the unfolded slip of paper on the table before 
the sculptor, and leaned back in his chair with a heavy 
sigh. Randall read the short note almost at a glance. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


153 


He caught his breath quickly, and, shading his face with 
his hand, read it once again more slowly : 

“Don’t worry about me, father. I shall do very 
well. Don’t change towards Randall. It was all my 
fault. You shall hear from me if I am ill. 

“ Marianne.” 

He removed his hand presently to ask: “And you 
have heard from her .? ” 

“ Heard from her .? No. I thought. Ran, especially 
as I came again and again and found you gone, that 
you would have some news of her for me.” 

“Then she is not ill ” — he was not answering the old 
man, he was pursuing the tenour of his own thoughts — ■ 
“or you would have heard. She always kept her 
promises. ” 

“ Yes. Nan-nan always kept her promises.” 

“This note is generous. May I— I suppose you 
prefer keeping it, though .? ” 

The old man held out his hand. “Yes, I want it 
back. Ran. It may be, you know, that I shall never 
hear from her again.” 

“Nonsense! — rubbish! You are talking twaddle, 
Mr. Grayson ; the veriest sickly stuff.” 

“I am an old man, Randall ; a very old man.” 

“ She should have staid with you. She need not have 
deserted us both. I should not have forced her to 
return to me.” 

‘ ‘ I will tell you what she said about that. Ran : ‘ I 

do not want it to be in any one’s power, father, to say 
that you are harboring a truant wife.’ And more than 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


154 

once, that evening, she said she thought I might be of 
great use to you, Randall, and she did not want to 
stand between us. She knew, you know, that I had 
predicted great things of you.'’ 

“That was unselfish of her," Randall said, absently. 

“I never knew Nan-nan do a selfish thing. I was 
hard on her that night, Ran. I was very angry with 
her. And — and — I refused to kiss her good-night. I 
wish I had that night to go over again, Ran." 

Randall was sitting with his eyes still glued to the 
piece of paper on which Marianne had scrawled her 
farewell to her father : 

“ It was all my fault." “Don’t change towards Ran- 
dall." 

Those words seemed branding themselves with hot 
irons on his inner consciousness. They burned him, 
pained him, made him writhe ! But what could he do 
about it ? Even if he had wanted to bring her back to 
his side — and he was not at all clear yet in his own 
mind on that point — what steps could he take He 
turned upon the old portrait-painter with an impatience 
born of his baffled efforts to see some road out of 
.“this muddle." 

“But what can I do ? She has entirely effaced her- 
self" 

“ Have you tried to do anything, Randall ? " 

“ I have advertised." 

He hung his head, so that the porcelain shade of the 
lamp should shield him fully from the patient, anxious 
eyes staring at him across the table. He was ashamed 
to tell the old man how he had advertised ; how, in 
terms sure to repel a proud woman like Marianne, he 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


155 

had summoned her to return or — to take the conse- 
quences. A troubled silence fell between the two men. 
Then, with a slow, shuffling movement, the old one stood 
up and held out his withered hand to the young one. 

“I suppose there is nothing you can do. Ran — I sup- 
pose there is nothing I can do — but wait. And maybe 
I won’t be left here long enough to see her come back to 
you, loving and repentant. I am an old man, Randall, 
a very old one, and for the last twenty-four years Tve 
had nothing better to do than watch Nan-nan’s heart and 
soul unfolding like beautiful white flowers. If she’s 
done you a wrong, Randall, — and see, she’s put it down 
that way, in her own writing, — she will come back and 
say so some day. Perhaps I won’t be here to hear it, 
but she will do it. Ran. Nan-nan is just — and she is 
unselfish.” He held out his hand for the note, which 
Randall unwillingly relinquished to him. ‘‘ Perhaps ” — 
he was carefully folding it, to fit the dimensions of his 
pocket-book — “I may not be here when she comes 
back — ” 

“You will be over in Hoboken.” 

“No, not there, either. Ran; I am an old man, you 
know ; but if I’m not here. Ran, tell her that I missed her 
and — that I am sorry I did not kiss her good-night, that 
night she wanted me to. She asked me twice, but I 
refused her. You see. Ran, I didn’t want to seem to 
be siding with her against you.” 

“I see.” They were walking together towards the 
elevator ; Randall had put his strong young arm under 
the old man’s feeble shoulder. “ I see,” he said again, 
in a voice from which all the impatience and irritation 
had suddenly been extinguished. “I wish I could make 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


156 

it easier on you, Mr. Grayson. It is hard lines that I 
can t, when you’ve been doing me good turns ever since 
I was a beggarly little dauber. ” 

‘‘Don’t you miss her too, Ran.? Don’t you too feel 
as if something had gone out of the world since Nan-nan 
took this wild whim in her head .? ” 

The open elevator was waiting for him. There were 
three impatient passengers standing on its platform. 
Randall propelled the old man forward, the door slid 
between them, and that last pathetic question remained 
unanswered. 

When he got back to the studio once more he was con- 
scious of such an inward tempest as had rarely ever 
beset him. Why could he not openly and defiantly tell 
that trembling old man that his marriage and Marianne’s 
had been a dismal failure, that the step she had taken 
towards retrieval was a wise one, and that he would not 
have her retrace it .? Why could he not rid himself of those 
haunting words in which she had shielded him to the 
very last from the blame that was rightfully his .? Yes, 
he would acknowledge it there, all by himself — rightfully 
his. Why would she perpetually force him to put her 
lofty integrity, her pure womanly unselfishness, against 
his own littleness, meaness, falseness ? Later on, hours 
it seemed to him, he found himself standing in a sort of 
trance before his masterpiece. He had flung the dusty 
shroud to a distant corner. He was gazing steadfastly 
at the work of his own hands. He leaned forward once 
or twice to brush off a speck of loose marble dust. But 
he was not thinking just then of the smooth, marble 
arms, the proudly poised head, the delicately chiselled 
nostrils, or the folds of drapery that were still to be 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


157 

carved out of the shapeless mass of marble in which the 
statue terminated. 

He was thinking of Marianne, as she had looked on 
the day when he told her he was going to begin this, his 
masterpiece, taking her for his model. She had flushed 
up to her smooth white temples with pleasure and pride. 
He was thinking of her, as she had confronted him on 
that morning — that morning, after he had come back 
from Foster’s, and had asked him to take back that ugly 
word “hampered.” He went farther back than that, 
back to their life together, with the old portrait-painter 
in Hoboken ; back to the beginning of their joint life 
as man and wife, when Marianne had purposely made 
light of every hardship and had made sunshine for him 
in the dark places. 

Perhaps he had been a brute ! The old man was 
right ; she was just, she was unselfish. 

He turned away from the statue with a petulant 
movement, and stooping, picked up the cloth and 
wrapped it once more around the smooth marble limbs. 

“If it could but open its lips and tell me where you 
sleep to-night, I believe — yes, I believe I would go to you 
— Nan-nan ! Oh, what an incomprehensible fool I am ! 
I wish some one would help me to understand myself ! ” 

The window was open. The warm air outside stirred 
the fringe of the yellow holland shades. Gay sounds 
of children’s voices floated in to him from the square 
below. Dusk deepened into night. Lamps sprang into 
luminous existence here, there, everywhere. 

He had forgotten that he was tired and hungry; for- 
gotten Chilternhurst, forgotten Jeanne Lenox : for the 
time being Marianne, his wife, once more held full sway 
oyer that untrustworthy thing he called Lis heart, 


158 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

Dr. John Milbank in winter and Dr. John Milbank in 
summer were two entirely different individuals, barring- 
a few physical and moral characteristics which marked 
him at all times. 

The urban Dr. Milbank was a faultlessly arrayed, 
clean-shaven, grave-eyed, methodical man of estab- 
lished reputation, who had office hours, which filled his 
handsome waiting-room to its full capacity, and who 
went to see his patients, out of office hours, in a smart 
little coupe, with a bebuttoned driver on the box. 

The rural Dr. Milbank was a long-legged, light- 
hearted boy, with an invincible scorn for dress coats, 
polished shoes, and stiff hats ; who luxuriated in fair- 
leather shoes and white flannel shirts, and climbed 
mountains, rowed skiffs, or fished for mythical black- 
fish in the most unlikely waters with infinite patience 
and gusto. 

This Dr. Milbank, urban or rural (always urbane), 
had a theory which he put into practice religiously every 
August that rolled around. His theory was, that a 
man’s brain, to be kept in good working order, must be 
entirely relieved of all tension periodically, as one lets 
down fiddle-strings — presumably to keep them from 
snapping. 

The relief his brain needed was to get away from 
people. Eleven months out of the twelve he was giving 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


159 

his brain, his energy, his sympathy, to people — people 
with real ills and people with fanciful ills. 

The twelfth was his. In it he would do no manner 
of work. That was easy enough to say and to do, all 
the easier for the fact that Dr. Milbank’s practice was 
largely confined to the class which would sooner be 
caught picking a lock than remain in town during the 
heated term. 

(About what he did among the poor and suffering he 
never let his right hand gossip with his left. ) 

But how to get away from people ! That was the 
problem that had marred his one month out of the 
twelve for years, until chance sent to him one day a 
quaint-looking little old woman, bent of back and care- 
worn of face, but patient and gentle — iTnspeakably gentle 
— with it all. She came to him to be healed. 

She offered this successful city doctor her modest fee 
for the skill which had relieved her of years of suffering, 
with a timid suggestion by way of supplement. 

“This is precious poor pay, Doctor,'’ she said, laying 
her offering on the table and eying it askance, “and I 
wish I could make it up to you in some other way. I 
could in one ; but you’re not likely to fancy that way, 
unless you get about as tired of folks and noise as I 
would if I lived here.” 

“ I do get very tired of them,” had said the city doc- 
tor, looking a trifle impatiently at this plain country- 
woman, who seemed inclined to consume more of his 
precious time than she was entitled to. 

“Then perhaps what I was going to propose \yon’t 
strike you as so foolish after all. I’d like to have you 
board it out with me in summer. I haven’t paid you 


l6o A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 

enough, but I’ve paid you all I can in hard cash. I live 
in a little house up on Lake George, Doctor, not any- 
where near about the big hotels. It ain’t much of a 
house--*-just a little brown frame thing, set down in the 
middle of an apple orchard, with honeysuckle vines 
’most hiding it from the road. There ain’t anybody 
there but just me and the old man. He spends 
all his play-time hunting birds’ eggs or stuffing 
birds. Childish sort of work, I tell him, but it don’t 
make any noise and it pleases him. It’s awful 
quiet and solemn there of nights. Then the hills grow 
dark and still behind us, and the lake goes swish- 
swashing against the rocks in front. But I think you’d 
like it for a little while, doctor. It’s real pretty when 
the buckwheat is* in flower and the sumach’s turning 
red. You’d like it, maybe, if you’re fond of milk and 
honey. We ain’t very high feeders. But maybe” — she 
looked at him anxiously — “you wouldn’t like it, it’s so 
still. Sometimes, ’long of the middle of the day, you 
can hear the apples dropping in the orchard and the 
bees buzzing ’mong the buckwheat.” 

This sounded tempting to Dr. Milbank’s urban ears. 
He thought he should like it very much, that little 
brown house where the honeysuckles grew and where 
the bees sucked the buckwheat. He said as much to 
Mrs. Lockhart, causing her to press her brown woollen 
gloves together with a gesture of mute gratitude, while 
her faded cheek flushed with pleasure. 

“And I will try you next summer, on one condition, 
Mrs. Lockhart” He looked very resolute. 

“Yes, sir? ” 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


l6i 

“You are not to take any other summer boarders. " 

Mrs. Lockhart's laugh was one of relief. 

“That’ll be a easy condition to keep, Doctor. WeVe 
too far out of the way to suit most folks. But we’re 
easy to get at, for all that. Take a skiff at Caldwell, 
and tell any of those fellows to row you over to old 
man Lockhart’s, and they’ll bring you smack-bang in 
front of our place.” 

That “next summer ’’ had come five years before, and 
never since had Dr. IMilbank spent a single anxious 
speculation as to where he should spend his one month 
out of the twelve. 

The brown cottage, with the eternal hills hovering 
over it ; with its buckwheat fields spreading up the 
slopes like bleaching linen ; with its orchards and its 
bee-hives ; with its tidy house-wife, who made such 
marvellous hot biscuit and rich black coffee ; with its 
sturdy old house-band, who stuffed birds or discoursed 
political economy with impartial readiness, had all been 
pleasant realities to him for half a decade. 

Nothing to mar it. Nothing — until, coming home 
one afternoon, hungry as a bear, but especially elated 
with his day’s success as a fisherman, JMrs. Lockhart 
confronted him, as he turned from securing his skiff to 
its post, with a face full of concern, and a voice with a 
nervous tremor in it. 

“I hope you won’t think I’ve gone and broken my 
promise to you. Dr. Milbank, for nothing was ever 
further from my thoughts than having Nannie Grayson 
drop down on me in this way. I haven't heard a word 
from her for more than three years now ; but then, you 
see, she don’t come under the head of summer boarder- 


62 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


I wouldn’t think of charging Nannie anything, and our 
own dear mothers own dear sisters. She’s very quiet, 
Doctor, and perhaps after a while you might get used to 
seeing her about, like you did Roger — you know you 
couldn’t abide Roger the first summer. Poor old Roger ! 
the mice are about taking the house since he died. 
Such a mouser ain’t picked up every day. Nannie’s 
quite a lady.” 

Dr. Milbank looked down at the agitated face of 
his landlady in some perplexity. He had been scoop- 
ing up the fish from the bottom of the boat when she 
had burst upon him with what sounded, in spite of its 
incoherence, like an abject apology. They were walk- 
ing towards the house now, he carrying the bucket and 
she nervously twisting her apron-strings between her 
fingers as she glanced up at him sideways. 

“I don’t think I quite understand you, Mrs. Lock- 
hart.” 

“ It’s nothing, only that I’ve got a very unexpected 
cousin here from New York. She looks bad, and says 
she found she had to leave town if she didn’t want to 
get down sick, and as I had told her to come to me 
whenever she wanted a whiff of country air, she thought 
she’d come— but that was long ago, doctor, when me 
and the old man used to think the summer days would 
be shorter if somebody from the world would come and 
stay a bit with us two lonely old folks. We haven’t 
wanted anybody since we found you. Doctor.” 

'‘Thank you,” said Dr. Milbank ; but, as Mrs. 
Lockhart confidentially informed Mr. Lockhart later, 
" he looked put out.” 

He was "put out.” He felt defrauded. His profesr 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


163 


sioiicil sympathies were being called unduly into ac- 
tion by this cousin of Mrs. Lockhart’s, who had come 
there to keep from being “ taken down sick.” A cousin 
— and a female cousin from New York ! What could 
be more threatening ? She had come there to spoil his 
whole month, and here he was just in the first blissful 
week of it. He frowned ominously. Mrs. Lockhart 
watched his growing seriousness with a pang at her 
Qfentle heart. 

“You know I promised you. Doctor, that as long as 
you chose to come here you shouldn’t be pestered with n 
any other boarders, and if Nannie had written to me 
about her coming I could have staved her off, you 
know. And I can say with my head up, that neither 
me nor the old man ever broke a promise. A promise 
is a promise.” 

“Will you want my room he asked, curtly. 

Mrs. Lockhart’s reproachful glance was entirely 
thrown away on him. His eyes were fixed moodily 
on the dusty toes of his fair-leather shoes. He was 
vaguely conscious that he was acting like a bear ; but 
his paradise had been rudely invaded and he felt bearish. 

- “ How can you ask that. Doctor.? No, sir, you’re 
first in this house and always will be, next to the old 
man.” 

“ Does she play on the piano .? ” 

With an inward quaking he recalled the presence of 
a piano in Mrs. Lockhart’s parlor. He had often won- 
dered but never asked why it was there. The old man 
found it a convenient work-table when finishing any 
particularly delicate operation in taxidermy. So far it 
had been entirely innocuous. 


I 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


“ She can play, but she won’t in this house,” Mrs. 
Lockhart said, with vicious resolution in her mild voice. 

“Shall I have to take her rowing every time I get into 
the skiff, or teach her how to handle the oars, or help 
her up all the steep hills, or strip birch bark for her, or 
do any of the other things which men who are supposed 
to be resting from a year’s hard work are usually ex- 
pected to do for idle women ? ” 

Blood is thicker than water, and Mrs. Lockhart flared 
up gently. There was a pink spot on each of her thin 
cheeks. 

“ I never heard of our Nannie’s making a nuisance of 
herself to anybody, Dr. Milbank, but a promise is a 
promise, and I told you you shouldn’t be bothered by 
our taking anybody else in the house as long as you 
was here. Nannie’s that sweet and reasonable that I 
can explain matters without her going off in a huff, 
and I’ll do it the first thing in the morning, after she’s 
rested. If you’ll give me them fish, Doctor, I’ll get them 
ready for your supper.” She held out her hand for the 
bucket. “I’ll explain matters to Nannie to-morrow.” 

“ I beg you will do nothing of the kind.” 

Dr. Milbank passed into the house feeling distinctly 
that he was neither “sweet” nor reasonable,” and that 
he was in “a huff.” But he was willing to leave it to 
any impartial judge, was it likely that any female cousin 
of Mrs. Lockhart’s could come from New York and be 
domiciled under that cramped little roof with him, and 
;z<9/ spoil his vacation.? A “ saleslady ” doubtless — or 
— horrors ! — perhaps a student from the woman’s medi- 
cal college, who would expect him to coach her for her 
next examination, without mercy and without a fee. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


165 

Dr. Milbank had the average male doctor’s antipathy 
for the female of that persuasion. His imagination took 
wild flight between the moment when Mrs. Lockhart 
had broken this disagreeable piece of news to him and 
the one when the old taxidermist was heard spluttering 
in the tin wash-hand basin that stood on the corner 
shelf just outside his door. 

That meant that supper was almost ready. He could 
sniff the odor of the fish frying — the fish which he had 
caught up the lake about three miles, in a quiet little 
cave, where the deflowered lily pads lay thick, and a 
quaint old wooden bridge had cast shadowy arches across 
the bit of dark water where he had fished. It was a 
pretty bit of nature. 

He should carefully abstain from any allusions to it, 
however, for it would be as much as a week’s peace of 
mind was worth to allude to any such “ finds ” before 
this new woman from New York. 

If he found her too much of a bore he would leave, 
that was all. And no one could blame him. 

Mr. Lockhart’s spluttering in the basin outside sug- 
gested his own preparations for the supper table. This 
usually consisted in substituting his slippers for his 
dusty shoes, and in partially concealing his white flan- 
nel shirt under a loose sack coat of fine seersucker, 
Mr. and Mrs. Lockhart, in the goodness of their un- 
sophisticated souls, protesting against even that modest 
display of “city style.” 

To-night his preparations were neither more nor less 
than what they always were. He was buttoning the 
top button of his seersucker sack, when his attention 
was arrested by hearing Mrs. Lockhart (evidently in 


i66 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


the kitchen) ask a question of her guest (evidently in 
the dining-room). The space of two rooms was between 
the voices. 

And you say your pa still holds his own, Nannie.? ” 

“Father looks splendid. His health is marvellous, 
taking his age and everything else into consideration.” 

The voice was a cultured one, silvery clear, and 
raised a little now, to be heard at a little distance and 
above the sounds of fish being fried and a table being 
set. Evidently the owner of the voice was ofticiating 
in the dining-room and Mrs. Lockhart in the kitchen. 
The voice itself belonged neither to a saleslady nor to a 
medical student. He could never imagine it calling 
“Cash!” with a nasal intonation, nor answering the 
brutally direct questions of a medical quiz. Mrs. Lock- 
hart spoke again : 

“And he still holds out at the old place.? ” 

“Yes. Father says no place but Hoboken will ever 
feel like home to him, and I don’t believe it ever will.” 

Hoboken ! 

Dr. Milbank heard no more of the conversation going 
on between he two women on the other side of the 
partition. He was once more on a ferry-boat on the 
North River. A white mist was over all the earth. 
The time was very early morning. He had been re- 
turning from an all-night case. There was only one 
woman passenger, and he had watched her with a sort 
of professional curiosity, mixed with some anxiety. 
She had looked ready for almost anything as she stood 
by herself on the front deck, her garments fluttering a 
little as the boat plunged its way across the river. 

More than once his thoughts had gone back to the 


A SFLEJVDID EGOTIST. 


167 

fleeting experience of that morning ; and whenever they 
did he had half expressed a wish that he could have 
followed that experience to some sort of a finale. 

“That was 110 ordinary woman/' he said to himself, 
turnin'g towards the door, as Mrs. Lockhart, in primitive 
fashion, applied her mouth to its key-hole, hissing 
cheerfully : 

“Doctor! Supper!" 

Mrs. Lockhart’s supper-time was primitive, as all 
her ideas and regulations were. It was to be gotten 
over and done with before “candle-light." Nothing 
pleased John Milbank better than to sit there between 
the two old gentlefolk, the open door, where the honey- 
suckle grew thickest, in front of him, and, for a back- 
ground, the dark, wooded hills, which he was never 
tired of exploring. 

To-night there was a chair opposite him at table, and 
between him and the honeysuckles stood a tall woman, 
her hand resting lightly on the back of her chair, and 
her sloping shoulders, surmounted by a beautiful neck 
and head, clearly silhouetted against the dark-green 
background of the hills outside. 

They always stood while the old taxidermist asked 
God to bless the food before them. This ceremony over, 
Mrs. Lockhart waved her thin hand by way of indicating 
her cousin’s presence. 

“My cousin — Miss Grayson — Dr. Milbank." 

Marianne looked her vis-a-vis in the face, seeing before 
her a tall, grand-looking man, and bowed. 

She was thinking uneasily of the introduction just 
made in good faith by Mrs. Lockhart. Here she had 
expected to be nothing but “Nannie." These far-away 


‘ i68 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


cousins knew nothing of her brief married life, and 
she had felt too utterly wearied, body and soul, to en- 
lighten them. After all, what mattered it This man 
would go away in a little while, and would forget her 
very existence, as she would his. 

Dr. Milbank looked his vis-a-vis in the face, and al- 
most forgot to bow at all. 

Th( Hoboken passenger, by all that was remark- 
able ! He had said that if ever he saw that face again 
he should remember it instantly. And here she was ! 

He sat down with a suddenness not at all in keening 
with his usual elegant deliberation. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


i6o 


CHAPTER XVII. 

Mrs. Lockhart sat in the doorway of the little brown 
cottage on the hill-side, shelling beans into her blue 
check apron with an expertness born of much practise. 
The beans were to be hung up in little canvas bags 
against the rafters of the shed room for winter use. 
Though her eyes rested upon the beans in her lap, her 
thoughts went in an entirely different direction, and a 
little, amused smile flickered about her dry lips. 

Mr. Lockhart was not very far off. She could see 
him pottering about, examining the apples in the orchard. 
He was standing under “Lady Jane Grey,'" their very 
best. He was waiting for the hired man to come back 
from the field with another load of hay, which he would 
help him to pitch into the loft over the cow-shed. He 
had already made the cow-shed snug and tight for winter 

Already signs of the dying summer were plentiful, and 
Autumn was placing her flaming torches all up and 
down the hill- sides. The old man straightened his 
back and called across to the old woman sitting in the 
doorway shelling beans. He had two large red apples 
in his hands. 

“ I say, mother ! ’’ 

There had been a child born unto the house of Lock- 
hart many, many years ago ; but it had only abode 
with them long enough for the old man to fall into the 
way of saying “mother"' instead of “ Mirandy.” 

“Well, old man?" 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


170 

“ I guess ril be filling the doctor’s barrel of Lady Janes 
and be getting his maple sugar weighed.” 

“I guess I wouldn’t be in any particular hurry, 
Lockhart.’’ 

The amused smile broadened on Mrs. Lockhart’s fea- 
tures. 

‘‘I guess I ain’t in a hurry,” came back to her, 
crisply. “He most generally leaves on the first of 
September, as punctual as clock-work, and here it is 
to-morrow the third. ” 

“ I know it. I’ve got a calendar hanging straight 
before my eyes over the kitchen table. All the same, 
Davie, I'd wait till the doctor ordered them apples 
packed.’’ 

Mrs. Lockhart’s entire manner of delivering this prac- 
tical advice was so much out of the ordinary that Mr. 
Lockhart, still holding fast his two big red apples, came 
slowly across the strip of yard that separated them, and, 
flinging the apples into her lap, sat down on the steps 
at her feet : 

“What’s the matter, Mirandy .? ” 

“Nothing as I know of, Davie.” 

“ But what makes you so mysterious .? ’’ 

“ Mysterious about what, Davie 1 ” 

“Why — well — I can’t just exactly say ; only something 
seems to be amusing you mightily.” 

Upon this Mrs. Lockhart permitted the smile to take 
full possession of her discreet old face. It curved her 
thin lips, wrinkled her withered cheeks, and danced 
merrily in her keen blue eyes. 

“It is funny, Davie, and I couldn’t help thinking, 
sitting here shelling beans, of how meek I said to him. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


171 

that maybe he would get used to her like he got used 
to Roger. You know he couldn’t abide Roger that first 
summer, Lockhart. ” 

“Yes — no. You ought to have let me stuff Roger, 
mother. I believe he would have kept the mice away, 
dead or alive. He was a cat.” 

“Fm not talking about Roger ^specially, just now, 
though ril tell you now, as I told you then, if you 
think I would have a cat that had been following me 
up and down ever since it was weaned, just like a dog, 
stuffed and plumped down in one place to be staring at 
me out of glass eyes for the rest of my natural existence, 
you’re mistaken, Davie Lockhart. I loved that cat, 
Davie. ” 

The smile which had disappeared during this brief 
tribute to Roger, returned in full force. 

“Oh, my ! and — ‘ does she play on the piano .? ’ ’’ 

The joke had finally penetrated Mr. Lockhart’s com- 
prehension. He was of Scotch extraction, which must 
explain the slowness with which he caught up. He 
took one knee in both hands now and laughed aloud. 
It was not the first time he and Mirandy had privately 
rehearsed the first act in the drama which John Mil- 
bank and Marianne Mackaye were playing in, as lead- 
ing gentleman and lady, up there among the Lake 
George hills. 

“ ‘And will I have to take her in a skiff every time I 
get into one ? ’ ’’ said the old man. 

“ ‘Or teach her how to row } ’ ’’ said the old woman ; 
“ ‘ or help her up all the steep hills ’ ” 

“ ‘ Or strip birch bark for her.? ’ Where are they now, 
mother .? ” 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


172 

“Gone over to Tea Island.’’ 

“Tea Island ? There ain’t anything there to see nor 
to do. Just about an acre of rocks and bushes that no- 
body don’t notice since the hotel folks stopped having 
high teas there in picnic style.” 

“There ain’t much to see, I’ll grant you, but what 
there is of it will be new to Nannie, and there’s always 
plenty of huckleberries over there. I just asked the 
doctor and her plump out if they wouldn’t go over and 
pick a bucketful for to-morrow’s baking. Tm afraid 
the doctor’s sort of weakening’ on pumpk’in pie. He 
don’t eat like he used to, Davie.” 

“ Mother, I hope you don’t want to put your finger in 
that sort of pie. ” 

“What sort of pie, Davie.?” Mrs. Lockhart’s tones 
were positively dulcet. 

“That sort,” jerking a hairy thumb towards an emer- 
ald-green islet, which lay just on the other side of the 
lake, in full view. “ M’noeuvering to get folks married 
is a risky business, mother ; mighty risky. ” 

Mrs. Lockhart seemed lost in reflection for a mo- 
ment : “I never saw Nannie as unreasonable and as frac- 
tious as she was this afternoon. She wouldn’t budge 
till I said to her, in a whisper, of course, she acted like 
she was afraid somebody was going to court her ; then 
she picked up that bucket and said, as cool as you please, 
‘ I believe 1 will go with you. Dr. Milbank.’ You see, 
he was tired of coaxing.” 

“Maybe she don’t like him.” 

“ Who don’t like who .? ” 

“Nannie mightn’t like Milbank.” Mr. Lockhart re- 
peated this heresy in the mildest of voices. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


173 


“Not like him! Davie Lockhart, do you think the 
daughter of my own dear mothers own dear sister 
could be such a ninnie 

“Not a ninnie exactly, but she might be a little 
peculiar in her tastes. You know women-foiks are 
queer sort of things.” 

“None of that, Davie; none of that.” Mr. Lockhart 
was never permitted to progress very far in his analysis 
of feminine “ queerness.” “You can stuff the birds of 
the air and the beasts of the field ; nobody can beat you 
at that, if I do say it, who shouldn’t ; but when you 
come to talking about women-foiks you’re getting be- 
yond your depths, Davie ; you’re getting into deep water. ” 

The old taxidermist accepted this just rebuke with a 
patient smile, leaned over and helped himself to one 
of the apples he had thrown into his wife’s lap, and be- 
gan silently pealing it, letting the long, red, curling skin 
unwind itself slowly. 

“Shall I throw it over my head, mother, and see 
if it makes an M .? You know that used to be the fashion 
in our days.” 

Mrs. Lockhart smiled into the ruddy old face beneath 
her. Matrimony had been entirely satisfactory to her 
and Davie. Suddenly she jumped up and, untying her 
apron-strings, laid the apron, beans and all, across the 
old man’s knees. 

“ Just finish ’em for me, will you, Davie. They’ll be 
coming home hungrier than wolves presently. I think 
I’ll beat up a few batter-cakes for supper.” 

And she disappeared within doors, leaving her hus- 
band confirmed in his opinion that women folks were 
a queer sort of things. 


174 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


“If they come back engaged/’ he said, reflectively, 
turning his keen old eyes towards Tea Island, “they 
won’t know whether they’re eatin’ sawdust or pound- 
cake ; and if they come back — the other way — what 
good’ll batter-cakes do ? That’s the way I had ’em. ” 

Mr. Lockhart evidently included his own courting 
days with his measles and mumps and other sharp 
attacks of things. 

But it was with no fatuous desire to furnish Mrs. 
Lockhart with huckleberries for her Saturday’s baking 
that Dr. Milbank had fallen so readily in with her sug- 
gestion about Tea Island. 

He had found his landlady’s cousin rather inacces- 
sible for the last week or ten days, and, as he had pur- 
posely stayed over with a view to asking her a direct 
question, he did not intend to be thwarted of his pur- 
pose or of an answer. 

Three weeks’ residence under the same roof with this 
stately woman, who rarely ever smiled, who never 
talked nonsense, who showed herself quick of percep- 
tion and ready of sympathy, had satisfied him fully on 
one point. He should like very much to make her his 
wife and put her at the head of an establishment in 
New York City. “She would grace the position.” 

Before they got through with what he openly pro- 
nounced “ a babes-in-the-woods occupation,” Marianne 
was aware of the ordeal before her. She had conscien- 
tiously insisted upon the bucket being filled with huckle- 
berries before conversation became possible. The ex- 
ercise, or her nervous hurrying from spot to spot, had 
brought a brilliant color into her smooth white cheeks. 
John Milbank was sure he had never seen so absolutely 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


175 

beautiful a woman ; and he wanted all that beauty for 
his very own. 

The buckets were spilling over with berries, but 
Marianne was still flitting restlessly from bush to bush. 
He must force her to stop. He did not intend propos- 
ing to her back, however graceful it might look as he 
patiently trudged in her wake, with berry-encumbered 
hands. He dropped the bucket on a rock with sudden 
resolution. 

“Miss Grayson ! ” 

If she had been a naughty patient refusing to take a 
dose of his prescription he could hardly have called 
her name more authoritatively. 

“ Dr. Milbank ! ’’ 

She turned a haughty, flushed face towards him. He 
put out both hands beseechingly. Then the flush died 
out of Marianne s ftice, leaving her as white and rigid as 
the statue in her old studio home. 

“You must know I want to talk to you, and yet you 
flit before me like some white-winged bird determined 
to elude pursuit.'*’ 

“I am not so helpless as your pretty simile would 
imply. We have done what we came to do ; why not 
go back to the house ? We can talk there.” 

“Done what we came to do.? Do you suppose I 
rowed across that lake for huckleberries .? ” 

“That is what I came for.” 

She sat down on a moss-covered stump. She was 
trembling — trembling so that his keen and practiced 
eye would detect it if she stood there before him, with 
nothing to lean against. 

“That is not what I came for.” 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


176 

He stood there before her, looking down upon her from 
a great height as it seemed to her, sitting there on the 
low stump. The sun was just dropping below the hills, 
and the little islet was all aglow with his parting kisses. 
It got dark there very early, and the purple shadows 
would soon be staining the waters of the lake. If it 
must come, let it come. She had tried in every way to 
keep this acquaintance on a common-sense plain. She had 
failed with him. How about herself? She could have 
cried aloud there to the falling shadows, “ Failure, fail- 
ure, failure ! ” Presently she heard his voice above her, 
not quite steady in its tones, but intense and musical : 

think you know already, Miss Grayson, what I 
want to say to you. You are not the type of woman 
who is always profoundly surprised when a man puts 
into words the devotion he has been showing in deeds 
for any length of time — weeks, in our case. I think 
you already know that I am in love with you, do you 
not ? " 

He stopped deliberately for an answer to this direct 
question. She was sitting with folded hands before him, 
her eyes upraised to his with a calmness in them which 
he could not interpret. 

“Yes,” she ’said, “I know it.” 

“ And I think, also, you must know that when a man 
like myself — by that I mean a man who has not frittered 
away life in drawing-rooms — tells a woman that he 
loves her, it can mean but one thing.” 

“ Marriage.” 

The word came huskily from her dry lips. 

“Yes, marriage.” A smile of ineffable sweetness 
flashed across his face. “ I did not know I should b^ 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


177 


such a clown in the hour of trial ; but oh, my dear, if 
you could only trust your future to me I would try so 
very hard to make it a bright and happy one, though I 
may not have a practised wooer’s tongue.” 

He held out his hands to her once more. It was a 
caressing gesture, as if he would draw her then and 
there into the shelter of the arms that were to ward off 
all peril, all hardship, from her pathway in future. After 
what seemed an eternity of torture she heard herself 
answering him with a sort of fierce vehemence : 

“ Dr. Milbank, you don’t know what you are saying. 
You might as well talk of love and happiness to this 
stone my foot is resting on. It could just as readily 
respond. Put it in your bosom and it would give you 
just as much comfort as I could. I have been afraid of 
this moment, and I have tried to spare you and myself 
this interview. I ought not to have come here ; it was 
cowardly.” 

“Cowardly.?” He was looking at her perplexedly. 
In the manifold manifestations of woman’s nature which 
had been unfolded to John Milbank, the physician, this 
was the most puzzling to him as John Milbank, the 
lover. 

Why should she call her coming there with him 
cowardice.? Poor child, she hardly knew what she was 
saying. 

“I know you are not happy,” he said, looking down 
into her white, quivering face with grave tenderness. 
“ I have known that since the first moment I ever saw 
you. I wanted to comfort you then — I want to comfort 
you now — if only I may.” 

“ Then .? ” she repeated, dreamily. 


178 A SPLENDID egotist. 

“ Yes. It was one morning very early. You were 
on a Hoboken ferry-boat ; and when you left it you 
dropped this. I advertised it, but, got no answer. I 
have carried it about with me ever since. I thought, 
dear, that some time or other it might be the means 
of bringing us together. I don’t think I knew then 
that I had fallen in love with you, but I know it very, 
very well now.” His smile was exceedingly wistful. 

He had laid the photograph on her knees. She had 
given it only a glance. 

“Father’s photo. I had just left him. I meant to 
have painted him from this. Yes — I remember now — 
I missed it. ” 

“And — forgive me, my dear, but I want so very 
much to get beyond this vague barrier that stands be- 
tween my one love and me — you had parted with him 
in anger, perhaps ? ” 

Marianne’s lips quivered like a hurt child's. The 
hard brightness of her eyes was quenched in sudden 
tears. 

“Yes, we had parted in anger.” 

“Something that I might easily set right, perhaps, 
but which you, with your sensitive soul, are brooding 
over until — ” 

“No, you cannot set it right. Father was angry 
with me — because — because — I had just left my hus- 
band — left him voluntarily and finally.” She was 
standing before him in a defiant attitude. 

‘ ‘ Y our — husband .? ” 

“My husband.” 

Better to make him despise her utterly and entirely ! 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


179 

It would be the surest road back to peace for — him, was 
the way she reasoned. 

He walked away from her with his arms folded and 
his head dropped. “As if the shame were his,” she 
said, looking after him with dry, glittering eyes. Her 
bosom was heaving tumultuously. 

He was gone a long time. The purple shadows 
deepened on the water. The green of the hills turned 
to sombre black. The gay little boats that plied the 
waters all day long with summer idlers had all disap- 
peared. Marianne shivered as she sat there alone, in 
a world from which the last ray of light had suddenly 
been extinguished. Life wore such a leaden hue. 

She heard him coming back towards her. If only he 
had kept on and on and on, and never again turned that 
changed face toward her ! 

“I think, perhaps, Mrs. Lockhart will be growing 
uneasy about you. You will have to let me take you 
home, ”■ he said, with cold politeness. 

She got up slowly and followed him along the nar- 
row, brambly walk between the rocks. How old and 
dull she felt ! but how glad that he knew the truth about 
her at last ! 

They reached the cave where Dr. Milbank had 
shoved the skiff securely up between two rocks on their 
arrival. He was in front of her. She heard him give 
a startled exclamation, then he turned towards her 
abruptly : 

“We have either had a fool’s trick played us or else 
I fastened the skiff insecurely. It is gone.’' 

“Gone! And we are here without any means of 
getting home ? ” 


8o 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


“You will have to remain here until I can send a 
boat for you. I will swim to the mainland. It is nearer 
than Lockhart’s. I will send a boat back for you im- 
mediately. You are not afraid ?"’ 

“To stay here .? ” 

“Yes.” 

“No, I am not afraid.” 

He was laying his coat and hat on the rock where he 
had already deposited his shoes. She had no fears for 
his personal safety. She knew he had swam from her 
cousin’s to this island many a time for pastime. She 
moved a step nearer to him. If she could but hear him 
say something in kindness — at least in forgiveness — be- 
fore he went ! 

“I am not afraid,” she said again, looking at him 
with pleading eyes, “but before you go I want to hear 
you say one thing. Dr. Milbank, only one.” (She 
meant never to look upon his face again. ) 

“ And that is .? ” 

“ That you will try not to judge too ” 

“ I shall not judge you at all,” he said, icily. “As to 
why you left your husband — when — where — I am utter- 
ly indifferent.^ I have not spent a thought in that direc- 
tion since recovering from my first shock of amazement 
at hearing that you were a wife. Of the deception you 
have practised upon me ; of the heartless coquetry 
which permitted me to associate with you daily as I 
have done, showing you attentions which, when shown 
by a man of honor, could mean but one thing, I can find 
no words of condemnation strong enough.” 

He turned from her and, walking swiftly towards the 
water’s edge, plunged boldly in. She could hear him 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, i8i 

striking out with firm, steady arms. Then it grew very 
still there on the islet. 

She knelt down by the things he had laid aside. She 
pressed her lips to the coat he had worn. One cry of 
agony broke from her — only one. “Oh, God! I love 
him. I shall love him forever I ” 

She felt something hard in the pocket of the coat she 
sat there caressing with fond, foolish hands. She drew 
it out. She knew beforehand that it was the photo. 
From another pocket she produced his lead-pencil. 
There was still light enough to trace a few lines : 

“I wish I could have made things plainer. I am 
nothing but a source of misery to myself and to every 
one I love. Better that I should be out of the way.’' 

She had completely lost control of herself. Why she 
had written those lines on the back of her father’s photo- 
graph she did not know. She had a vague idea that to- 
morrow he would read them, and perhaps grow softer 
toward her. To-night — ah, to-night ! — his heart was 
frozen. There was nothing in it but gall and loathing 
for her. She thrust the picture and the pencil back in 
the coat pocket. 

Then she got up and walked — tottered, rather — away 
from the spot where his thing*? lay, walked away in the 
darkness and the stillness toward the other end of the 
little islet. 

He had said he would send back for her ; he would 
not come himself ; and yet, when it came to ordering a 
hireling to row over to Tea Island and bring Mrs. Lock- 
hart’s cousin back home, Dr. Milbank found he could 
not do it. He would go with the men. He would 
bring her back himself, and then — well, then — it was 


82 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


high time he was back in town. Bah ! what a fool he 
had made of himself ! 

He had been gone scarcely more than an hour when 
he got back to Tea Island with two strong rowers. His 
coat, hat, and shoes lay just where he had left them. 
He sprang up the rocky bank and got into them with 
nervous haste. Marianne was not in sight. He walked 
a little way inland, stopped and listened, then called. 
His lips curled a little as he called aloud for “Miss 
Grayson. ” 

The rowers climbed the rocky path after him. They 
joined in his search. No one could get lost on such a 
tiny islet, they assured him. “A man’s voice could 
be heard throughout the length and breadth of it” 

Three men’s voices were lifted up. The rocks sent 
the sounds back in mockery ; the water washing the feet 
of the rocks was the only other sound they heard. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


S3 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

“Friends of the promising young sculptor, Mr. Ran- 
dall Mackaye, whose handsome face and figure were 
seen often in fashionable parlors during the past spring, 
will regret to hear that he has completely broken down 
under the strain of the severe labor he imposed upon 
himself during the recent heated term, and that he now 
lies suffering from an attack of nervous prostration, in 
his rooms. Studio Building, North Washington Square. 

“Mr. Mackaye’s genius is equalled only by his am- 
bition. He has for several years been industriously at 
work upon a s+atue, from which he deservedly hoped 
to reap fame and fortune. It was his fatal resolve 
to complete this statute in time for the next Academy 
opening which led to his overworking himself. 

“His masterpiece now stands finished in his studio, 
but if his own vigorous young life is to be sacrificed to 
it, one can hardly give it the full meed of praise its 
transcendant merit claims." 

Perhaps of the thousands of eyes which were arrested 
by those three paragraphs in the City Sewer, for Novem- 
ber of a certain date, in an uncertain year, three pair 
only read them a second time, and reading them, pon- 
dered them anxiously. 

Jeanne Lenox always read the City Sewer. It was 
“spicy." It “carved people up with such a nice sharp 
knife.” Even Miss Hildah was not above suspicion of 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


184 

having occasionally surreptitiously perused and en- 
joyed its highly-spiced malice. 

Jeanne read that statement about Randall Mackaye, 
and, bending her pretty head low over the paper, cried 
tempestuously for a little while in a really heartbroken 
fashion. 

That accounted for everything ! — accounted for Ran- 
dall’s not having been near her since they parted at 
Mrs. Chiltern’s ; accounted for his queer, short replies to 
the notes she had sent him, conveying gentle little re- 
proaches for his neglect of “his best friends.” “ Poor 
dear ! ” he had been killing himself trying to get that 
statue done, so that he could take his place before all 
men — his proud, rightful place as a genius. As if she 
cared for anything but him — just him — ^just as he was ! 
And now — perhaps — he was going to die, and her father 
in Europe, and she nothing but a poor helpless girl, and 
nobody to help him ! 

Florence should find out for her just how ill he was. If 
very ill, she would go to him — go to him in spite of the 
whole world. He was hers — and she loved him ! No 
wonder Jeanne’s tears flowed hot and fast. 

Dolly Chiltern read it. Dolly always read the City 
Sewer when he was in town. It was “so deucedly 
personal” that one knew just exactly what everybody 
was up to without the trouble of personal inquiry. 
He would go straight to Mackaye. The fellow must be 
lonely, and it wasn’t his fault that Jeanne Lenox had 
chosen to give her affections to a penniless Bohemian 
rather than to him, Dolly Chiltern, worth half a million 
in his own right. He would “stand by Mackaye.” 

Mrs. Roper read them and turned anxiously to look 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


185 

at the date. The City Sewer was not in her line. This 
copy had been left in her reception room by a fashion- 
able customer. It was a week old. He might be dead 
and buried in that time ! And, whatever he might be, 
however he may have treated her, all was forgotten 
now, and she only remembered the child she had prom- 
ised to care for all her life. 

In tremulous haste she got into her very best dress 
and bonnet. Some of his fashionable friends might 
happen in while she was there, and she shouldn’t like 
Ran to be ashamed of her. 

It was with a feeling akin to awe that she stepped 
into the studio. The janitor had pointed it out to her. 
It was so entirely unlike anything, she had ever seen 
before, with its litter of white plaster casts and ghostly 
busts and pictures, and there, mysteriously draped, 

‘ ‘ that tall thing” which must be the statue he had almost 
killed himself working at. 

On a sofa-bed, so placed that his sad eyes, when open, 
must rest on it, lay Randall, his black hair matted over 
his broad, white forehead, and one long, thin hand lying 
upon the back of the sofa. His eyes were closed when 
Mrs. Roper tiptoed cautiously towards him. She stood 
over him, with her best black-kid gloves crossed meekly 
in front of her ; there were tears in her gentle eyes. 

‘ ‘ Ran, ” she said softly, bending over him with hushed 
breath. 

He opened his eyes, but evinced no surprise or 
emotion at her presence. He simply gazed at her. 

“It’s me, Ran; your sister, Rebecca.” 

“I know you, Becky, and — I am glad to see you. 
Find a chair for yourself, won’t you ? ’’ 


i86 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


The tears sprang- afresh into good Mrs. Roper’s eyes, 
tears of sorrow, perhaps, at seeing Ran — her Ran, who 
had looked so gay and handsome and strong that night, 
sitting there in the square, lying here so white and wan 
and helpless ; — tears of gratitude, perhaps, for the tardy 
words, “ I am glad to see you.'’ 

“I thought perhaps, if there was nobody you’d rather 
have. Ran, you’d let me stay here and nurse you. I 
read about you in the papers.” 

“There's nobody I’d rather have, Becky — it is good 
of you to come, and I am glad to see you. You won’t 
mind if I go to sleep. I am very tired. Kiss me, 
Becky. Kiss me good-night as you used to a longtime 
ago — a pardoning kiss, sister. ” 

She stooped down and kissed him. That kiss bridged 
over all these long years of neglect. It was the Ran of 
long ago come back to her. She laid her bonnet and 
gloves aside, and stole about noiselessly setting things 
straight while he closed his eyes. She heard him sigh 
once — a tired sigh ; then he lay quite still. 

There was no end- of medicine bottles standing all 
about ; and there were bouquets jn various stages of 
decay. These Mrs. Roper bundled unceremoniously 
into a basket and, carrying them to the elevator, asked 
the elevator boy if he would kindly dump them in the 
street : “The smell of ’em is enough to kill a well 
man. ” 

‘ ‘ Them’s the young lady’s flowers. Did he say dump 
’em out ? She fetches ’em every day. ” 

“Which young lady?” Mrs. Roper looked at the 
basketful of flowers anxiously. Perhaps she was go- 
ing a little too fast. Ran might be angry. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


187 

“The one that comes Tout dark. She’s a stunner. 
Better-looking than the one that staid here at first with 
him. We all thought that one was Mrs. Mac.” 

Mrs. Ropers eyes dilated with horror. What depths 
of iniquity her poor Randall must have sounded ! She 
supposed all artists were that way, however. 

“I am Mr. Mackaye’s sister,” she said, with spirit, 
“ and I have come here to nurse him. I shall see that 
no one else intrudes on him.” 

“ All right, mum. I guess he needs a sister or some 
womankind to take him in hand. I can tell you — ” 

The electric button below cut short the elevator boy’s 
confidence. He drew the sliding door between him 
and Mrs. Roper, and shot downward. 

A doctor came, looked at Randall, looked at the glass 
by his side, gave a few directions to Mrs. Roper, who 
simply announced herself as his nurse, and went away. 
Randall stilRslept. 

A young man came, a tall, fair-haired, clear-eyed 
young man, who greeted Mrs. Roper courteously, bent 
solicitously over Randall, put a basket of grapes near 
the sofa, and, leaving a message from “ Dolly Chiltern,” 
went away. 

No one else came. The short November afternoon 
wore away quickly. It was growing dusky in the 
studio. Out there in the corridors the gas was alight. 
Mrs. Roper cast about for something which would pro- 
duce a mellow light in the studio. Nothing suitable 
could she find but the antique lamp, swinging by its 
three silver chains, in the arch of the alcove where stood 
that shrouded ‘ ‘ thing. ” 

She climbed on a chair to light it. “One of the sort 


i88 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


of things the foolish virgins carried,” she made no doubt. 
The yellow flame responded quickly to her match. It 
cast soft shadows over and about the veiled statue, over 
and about Randall, lying there in a dull sleep, over 
and about a girl’s form which was suddenly framed in 
the open doorway. She held a bunch of rose-buds in 
her hand. 

Mrs. Roper glided noiselessly towards the door, brist- 
ling all ove^ with virtuous indignation. Putting her two 
hands on the intruder’s shoulders she quietly backed her 
into the corridor, until she had her immediately under a 
gas jet, all the time peering angrily into the veiled face. 

“ Now, madam, who are you and vv^hat are you doing 
here .? Heavens ! Miss Lenox ! ” 

Her sacrilegious hands dropped from the shoulders of 
Jeanne’s velvet basque and hung limply by her sides. 
“I might have known that basque, anyway,’’ the little 
reflection shot through her in that one second of amaze- 
ment. 

• Roper ! ” 

The recognition was mutual. Jeanne bore no malice 
for the recent assault upon her. She clasped both hands 
about her assailant’s neck. Her pretty face was pale 
and woebegone. 

“Don’t keep me from him, Roper. I did not know 
you were a nurse. But I’m glad it is you who are with 
him, Roper. Oh, don’t keep me from going in. He does 
not know it. I come always when I know he will be 
asleep. I should die — if I could not.” 

Mrs. Roper could feel her trembling in her grasp. 
After all, if Randall got well this pretty thing would 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 189 

make him a sweet wife. But what a risk the poor, 
motherless thing was running ! 

Miss Lenox, are you engaged to that young man in 
there } she asked, gently. 

“Yes — no — that is — Oh, Roper ! I know I am put- 
ting myself completely in your power, but ” 

“You are safe with me, Miss Lenox ; but there’s the 
world at large.” 

The girl snapped her little fingers fiercely. “ That 
for the world at large I I love him. He loves me. He 
would not speak out, because I was rich and he was 
poor. Oh, my love, my love, how could you be so 
foolish .? ” 

She pushed by Roper and, gliding noiselessly into the 
room, knelt for a second with clasped hands at the head 
of Randall’s lounge. It seemed scarcely a moment be- 
fore she stood by Mrs. Roper, with shining tears in her 
big eyes. 

“I have not harmed him, Roper. He don’t know 
that I have ever been here. Nobody does but Florence, 
my maid. If I could not come here and kneel there to 
ask God to make him well I could not stand it, Roper — 
I could not stand it. I have left the roses. ” 

Mrs. Roper traversed the long corridor with the girl’s 
little hand in hers. Poor motherless, wayward child ! 
So reckless, and yet so pure ! She wished somebody 
would lock her up. 

When she got back to the studio Randall’s eyes were 
wide open. A feverish spot burned on both his cheeks. 
He looked up at her absently, as she bent over him. 
Then the light of recognition came slowly back into his 
eyes. 


190 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


“I thought, maybe, you had gone away from me, 
Becky. Who did that 

He pointed feebly toward the swaying lamp. 

“I did. I cast about for a lamp that would make a 
soft light, and that was the only one I could find. A 
poor, heathenish-looking thing it is, too.'" 

“ I like it. I am glad you did it. Would you mind 
taking that sheet off her face, Becky.?'' His eyes were 
fixed eagerly on the statue. “ I have not cared to un- 
cover it for anybody else, but I’d like you to see how 
beautiful she was. Take the sheet off, Becky." 

Mrs. Roper walked slowly towards the statue. Poor 
Ran, he certainly must be wandering, to talk of a thing 
of marble as her. d^he sheet was off now, and, though 
the face was not visible from her point of view, the 
little dressmaker stood back in an attitude of startled 
wonder and admiring awe, which was not thrown away 
on Randall. 

“You like her, Becky .? " 

‘ ‘ Like it, Randall ! It’s superb. She looks as if she 
had just turned her head away to listen for something 
she wanted to hear. And her neck, and that arm and 
hand ! Randall, the world will ring with your name 
after once that thing has been put on exhibition. " 

“ Then it will never ring with my name, Becky.” 

“Come, now, that’s a sick man’s fancy. You think, 
because you are a little done up, the end of all things 
has come. Wait till I get to coddling you with all the 
messes you used to love. Ran, don’t you remember 
the time you came home from school with the scarlet 
fever.?" 

But he was not listening to her. He was lying on his 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


191 

side, gazing fixedly at the statue, over whose brow the 
antique lamp shed a soft, lifelike radiance. He was 
repeating hdr own words : 

‘ ‘ Listening for something she wanted to hear. Oh, 
my love, my love, my beautiful, have you not heard it 
of late .? Have you not heard all my remorse, all my 
love, all my agony, over and over again ? Would you 
come back to me if you could, my sweet } Could you 
only came back to me from the cold, cold water, and 
let me hear you say H forgive you,’ would you do it, 
my beautiful one? Have I not knelt and kissed your 
marble feet, my own ? — have I not pressed my hot 
cheeks to your little cold hands, darling, and you would 
not take pity on me? Do you not know, where you 
are, my dear, that I would not let your image be gazed 
at by vulgar eyes .? ” 

Randall ! 

Mrs. Roper placed her small, black person resolutely 
between the statue and those staring eyes on the lounge, 
and hurriedly replaced the sheet over the figure. He 
frightened her. He had worked at the beautiful white 
fiend until she had bewitched him. He started per- 
ceptibly as she called his name, and broke his trance. 
His eyelids drooped heavily. He lifted them to ask : 

“Becky, has Mr. Grayson been here?” 

“Mr. Grayson? — no — a Mr. Chiltern has been here, 
and he told me to say, Randall, that he means to bring 
his own doctor here to-morrow. He says yours is a 
poor quack, but his will make a new man of you in 
no time. ” 

“Dolly is a good fellow — a loyal friend. I don’t 
deserve his friendship.” 


92 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


“You deserve everybody’s friendship, Ran. You 
always did have the knack of making folks love you, 
Ran, from a little boy up.” 

She was smoothing his matted hair back from his 
forehead. The touch of a woman’s hand was inex- 
pressibly soothing. His eyes closed again, but he was 
not asleep. 

“If Mr. Grayson comes while I am asleep, Becky, 
make him stay — and — make the old man comfortable, 
won’t you, Becky .? ” 

“Yes, Ran. But who is Mr. Grayson, dear.? ” 

“He is my father-in-law, and my companion in 
grief.” 

“Your father-in-law, Randall .? ” 

But no sound came from his drawn lips. She leaned 
forward and studied his face carefully. How beautiful 
it was ! — so clean-cut, so pure in its outlines ! “Yes, 
Ran had always had the fatal gift of beauty. But what 
could he mean by a father-in-law .? ” 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


193 


CHAPTER XIX. 

It was when she was giving him his breakfast the 
next morning, pouring his tea into the saucer to cool it, 
and buttering his toast for him, “for all the world as if 
he had just come home from school with the scarlet 
fever,” that Mrs. Roper first fully realized the ravages 
which illness had made in Randall’s massive frame. 

Too weak to lift the cup to his lips, he lay there as 
docile as a little child, and seemingly deaf to her per- 
sistently cheerful chatter. 

She chattered to him of everything, beginning with 
his first trousers and concluding with a mysterious 
allusion to Jeanne’s flowers, which were now iiodding 
their pretty heads at him over the edge of a crystal 
bowl on the stand at his elbow. 

Since Mrs. Roper had discovered that the flowers 
which were enough to “ make a well man sick ” were 
Jeanne Lenox’s offerings, her views on that subject had 
undergone material modification. 

“Jeanne and Ran would be man and wife some of 
these days — so it was all right.” 

“ I think I’ll just run home for a few minutes and tell 
’em I’m not coming. Ran. You see, I didn’t know, yes- 
terday, whether you would let me stay or not, so I came 
off in something of a hurry.” 

The toast was all eaten up and the tea-cup was empty. . 
She wmuld run home and lay out the work for the girls. 


94 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


But Ran must not know he was “putting her out” in 
the least. 

“Take those things with you, Becky, and tell- them 
not to bring any more here.” 

She turned from the glass, where she was tying 
her black bonnet strings under her chin, to discover 
what it was she was to take away. It was Jeanne’s 
roses. 

“ But I can’t, dear. That is — oh, Ran, you wouldn’t 
hurt her feelings, would you ? ” 

“ Hurt her feelings ! Hurt whose feelings, Becky ? ” 

“ Hers — she’s — the one that brings them — that sends 
them, I mean. My, how he does stare ! ’’ 

Mrs. Roper was floundering in deep waters. It had 
occurred to her, sitting there by Ran’s lounge, keeping 
lonely vigils in the night just gone, that she might pos- 
sibly smooth the way for these two loving young hearts. 
If only Ran could be made to understand that his 
poverty need not keep him and Jeanne Lenox apart, it 
would be smooth sailing. 

Nothing had seemed simpler the night before. She 
had settled the entire matter with “neatness and des- 
patch ; had married Jeanne and Randall right there 
by Ran s sofa-bed ; had effaced herself completely once 
more, and seen the happy couple start for a continental 
tour, all without moving from the patent rocker, which 
only rocked when she had leaned forward to look into 
the still, white face on the lounge. 

Notliing seemed more difficult, with the prosaic light 
of a gray November day foiling harshly into the studio 
through its big uncurtained window, with beer trucks 
trundling noisily by the house every little while, and 


A ::plendid egotist. 


195 


Randall staring at her with intensely wide-open eyes, 
and with such an excessively displeased look about his 
lips. 

“ What do you mean, Becky } ” 

“Nothing, Ran; only I think the roses are lovely, 
and whoever spent their money on them must have 
been thinking kind thoughts about you, dear ; don’t you 
think so } ” 

“ Did a lady bring these flowers here, Becky ? ” 

Whatever came, Jeanne should not suffer at her hands 
if she had to lie right through and pray for forgiveness 
all the rest of her days, was the resolution quickly 
formed and stubbornly adhered to by Mrs. Roper. 

“A young woman, Ran — might have been the 
waitress, you know, of some of your lady friends, you 
know. ” 

“A young woman ! Was she slight and graceful ? ’’ 

“Slight enough, Ran. You know them hard-work- 
ing girls don’t accumulate none too much flesh. I 
wasn’t looking for grace. I was looking for your 
other slipper. ” 

“Eyes like a little child’s ? — big, innocent eyes ? ” 

“ Dear me, Ran, you sound like a detective. She may 
have squinted, for all I know, or worn green spectacles. 
She wasn’t here five minutes” (thank heaven for the 
privilege of inserting that much truth !), “and you’re 
asking me to describe her like I was a photograph man 
who had been taking her points for half-an-hour. I’m 
going now, Ran, and I’ll be back within half-an-hour.” 
She would no/ stay there and have the truth jerked out 
of her. 


A SPLENDID EGOT/Sr. 


196 

“Take the roses with you, Becky; Ido not want 
them. Take them away, Becky. 

Mrs. Roper lifted Jeanne’s roses from the crystal bowl 
with mixed emotions. It was a pity Miss Lenox’s offer- 
ing should be slighted in this way, but Ran was so cross 
and masterful this morning that he must be getting 
well — and there was solid comfort in that thought. 

When she got back to the studio, after having laid out 
the day’s work for her girls, Mrs. Roper found two 
strange men there. They were standing in the big un- 
curtained window. Randall was sleeping heavily. The 
men were talking. 

These two men presented a very sharp contrast to 
each other. The older one was quite feeble. His form 
was bent, his face was deeply furrowed with lines of 
care, and the finger he had laid impressively on the 
younger man’s broadclothed arm was the trem- 
bling finger of an old man. The younger man was 
listening with the gravest attention to something the 
other was saying. 

She was Randall’s sister and his nurse, and if they 
were talking about Ran she had a right to hear. She 
came and stood near them. 

“ I am his nurse,” she said. “ I’ve come to stay.” 

The old man waived her an old-fashioned bow ; the 
younger said curtly : 

“He needs you more than he needs me, I imagine, 
madam.” 

But the old man was impatient of this interruption. 
He plucked the other by his sleeve pettishly : 

“ He may wake up. Doctor, and, as I was saying, 

I think we ought to do by our doctors as we do by our 


i 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 1 97 

lawyers, tell them the whole truth and not leave them 
to guess at cause from effect. ” 

“You are quite right, sir ; I am listening with in- 
terest.’' 

It was John Milbank standing there looking down into 
old Mr. Grayson’s face. Ever since, sent by Dolly 
Chiltern, he had entered the studio and found this feeble 
old man walking restlessly up and down in front of the 
sick man’s lounge, he had been puzzling over that rugged 
face, with its searching eyes peering from under their 
shaggy gray eyebrows. He had not yet connected it 
with the photograph, which in itself had meant nothing 
to him, but which, when found with Marianne’s agitated 
scrawl on its back, had suddenly become sacred in his 
eyes. Photos are often misleading. This old, rugged 
man had not suggested this. 

“ I feel like a criminal every time I look at him,” the 
old man was saying, with peevish misery in his voice. 
“ I ought to have known better than to break bad news 
to him so suddenly ; but you see, Doctor — you see, I 
thought men always found the grit when it was needed, 
and I thought it was only womankind that had to have 
things broken to them gradually.” 

“There is an exploded theory to that effect,^’ said Dr. 
Milbank, caressing his close-cropped whiskers absently. 

“Nobody broke it to me. It came on me like a blow 
from a hammer in a giant’s hand. It came in a tele- 
gram from Davie Lockhart — in plain, bold words ; but 
every one of them dropped on my heart like a red-hot 
coal, Doctor. ‘Nannie — is — dead! Drowned.’ I sup- 
pose Davie couldn’t afford to make it longer. But 


198 A SPLENDID EGO TIS T 

I ’most wish he had waited to write it in a letter. 
Telegrams are such hard sort of things, you know.” 

Dr. Milbank had turned suddenly away from the 
old man and walked towards the alcove where the 
shrouded statue stood. He knew now why that rugged 
old face had haunted him so. That was the father, 
and — doubtless — that other one, the husband. Queer 
that he, John Milbank, who rather prided himself on 
his ability to read character, should have fallen such an 
easy prey to a beautiful face and a soft voice ! 

These were the men she had wilfully deserted — why, 
he was never to know, perhaps. The old man had 
followed him to the alcove. 

“You think Tm consuming your time uselessly, don’t 
you. Doctor .? But I thought if you knew the whole truth 
you might work to better advantage. ” 

“ I should like to know the whole truth very much 
indeed. Sit down, Mr. Grayson.” 

“Queer how you got hold of my name, seeing there 
was nobody to introduce us ! That is my son-in-law, 
Doctor, and the ‘ Nannie ’ that is dead — was my daughter, 
his wife. She was a beautiful woman, and we both 
loved her. I never knew how much he loved her till I 
came here that morning and broke the news to him 
without any warning. ” 

“ Yes — yes — she was away on a visit, was she.? ” 

“ Not just exactly. Doctor. Nannie was a strange 
creature — one of that fanciful sort that was always 
looking for the path of duty in some out-of-the-way 
track and determining to follow it out according to her 
own lights. She would have been burned at the stake 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


199 


if she had lived in the days when it was risky to be a 
Christian. 

“Ran wasn’t always the quiet thing- you see lying 
there now, Doctor. I think he and Nannie made a 
mistake in getting married. But that’s neither here nor 
there. Then when they moved over to the city here, 
and Ran got to be run after, like rising artists will, you 
know, Doctor, Nannie got a sort of morbid notion that 
she was a millstone ’round his neck, and that he could 
climb better without her than with her. Then they had 
a little tiff one day, — young married people will, you 
know. Doctor, — and he used an ugly word. It was 
‘hampered.’ She tried to get him to take it back, but 
he wouldn’t. Then, you see, she came to the conclu- 
sion that he really meant it, and she went away, telling 
him she meant to leave him free to make the very most 
of his talents. Nannie was always wilful.” 

“And she went away without consulting you ” If 
this whole matter had concerned persons he had never 
heard of before. Dr. Milbank’s voice could not have been 
quieter or his manner more thoroughly self-contained. 
He was holding himself in with a mighty effort. 

“No — she came to see me. Nannie was always good 
and sweet to me. She told me all that I have told you, 
that night, and she told me not to worry about her — I 
should hear from her if she was not well. I have heard. 
Doctor. ” 

“Why did you not keep her witli you .? ” 

“She would not stay. Doctor. She said Ran would 
need me. You see, he was an old pupil of mine, and 
had never got out of the way of sort of leaning on me, 
and she thought he would not come to me if she was 


200 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


there. She always believed Randall could do some- 
thing great if he wanted to — and wasn’t hampered. ’ 

“ Has he justified her expectations.? ” 

The old man pointed to the shrouded statue. 

“There stands a work of art which would make the 
name of that poor boy lying there famous forever.” 

Dr. Milbank looked at the shrouded figure with an 
interest that was positively painful. It was the altar 
upon which she had been immolated. 

“When will it be put on exhibition.?” 

“ Never. ’’ 

“ No .? ” 

“No. He did not finish it for that. He worked at 
it like a madman all summer, Doctor. He seemed all 
at once to realize what a grand, what an unselfish thing 
his wife had done, and all his vanity, all his littleness 
seemed to drop away from him in consequence. He 
came over to see me in Hoboken — I think it was about 
the first week in August — to hear if I had heard any- 
thing of Nannie. I told him I hadn’t. He sat thinking 
a long time, then he said suddenly : ‘Father-in-law, I 
was not worthy of her. I was not worthy to breathe the 
same air with her. I could not understand her then, 
but I do now. She will give no sign until the master- 
piece is finished and the world calls me great. Then 
she will come back and be my own loving, forgiving, 
gentle Nan-nan again. , She is watching me from some- 
where. ’ After he got that idea into his head he never 
seemed happy unless he was at work on the statue. 
And do you know, Doctor — maybe you, as a physician, 
may understand this part better than I do — the longer 
he worked the more in love with it, or with his wife, he 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


201 


seemed to become, until, by heavens, sir, the passion 
grew to be a consuming one, and he was never happy 
away from it/' 

“ Pygmalion and Galatea,” said John Milbank, under 
his breath. It hurt him sorely to think that the woman 
to whom he had given his heart’s first, strong, pure love 
should ever have been the wife of that vacillating weak- 
ling, lying there now, vacillating between life and death. 

“ Why is the world not to have the benefit of this 
wife’s sacrifice .? ” he asked, turning curious eyes once 
more upon the statue. 

“ Because,” said the old man, his voice sinking to a 
husky whisper, “ she stood for the model. It’s her — 
my beautiful child — turned to stone, that stands there.” 

A consuming desire to see it once, only once, took 
possession of the outwardly quiet man into whose ears 
Mr. Grayson had poured this story. 

“ Might not I be made a solitary exception of.? I 
am not the general public. I will not look on it with 
profane eyes.” 

The old portrait-painter turned his eyes anxiously 
towards the lounge. “Seeing you’re his doctor — I — • 
might — ” 

“ He will sleep for an hour yet,” said Dr. Milbank, 
impatiently. “He’s very much exhausted. I shall 
prescribe a tonic.” 

He obeyed a motion from the old man’s hand. Be- 
tween them they noiselessly drew the portiere in front 
of the alcove, ddien the old man applied a match to 
the antique lamp, and drew aside the veil that hid the 
masterpiece from view. 

With her beautiful head turned slightly to one side, 


202 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


her right hand upraised, the left hanging by her side, 
resting against the folds of marble drapery, she stood. 

He had seen her just in that attitude, when, turning 
once in the water, he had glanced back towards the 
rock he had left her standing on. She was dressed in 
white flannel — no spot of color about her. She had 
lifted her hand, almost as if beckoning him back to her 
side. In spite of his anger he had then in his heart 
called her “majestic’' and “superb.’’ Standing there 
before her effigy he called her so now. 

“ I think I will go back to Ran ; I can’t stand looking 
at it — yet — Doctor. Put out the lamp, please, when you 
get through.” 

He had heard an old man’s husky voice saying this 
at his elbow. He had heard the portiere softly lifted 
and dropped again. Then he stood there alone with 
it — alone with her — alone with his dead! 

How long he did not know. He heard voices in the 
outer room, among them the sick man’s querulous tones. 
The old portrait-painter was once more at his elbow, 
quickly shrouding the statue and extinguishing the lamp. 

“ Do you wonder now,” he was saying, “that when 
I put that cruel telegram before his eyes without a mo- 
ment’s w'arning, he broke down, Doctor ? ” 

“ No, I don’t wonder at that.'’ 

What he did wonder at was that the woman whom, 
thank God ! he could once more think of as something 
truer, stronger, and sweeter than the best woman he 
had ever known, could have wasted her truth, her 
strength, and her sweetness on the man whom Dolly 
Chiltern had sent him there to physic, and for whose 
benefit he was presently exercising his best profes- 
sional talents. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


203 


CHAPTER XX. 

The note which Dolly Chiltern had written to Dr. 
Milbank, requesting- him ‘‘as a personal favor ’’ to call 
at the Studio Building on North Wrrshington Square and 
see what could be done for “his friend,” Mr. Randall 
Mackaye, had contained the supplemental request that 
the doctor on his way back from this visit would drop 
in at Dolly’s club and lunch with him. 

Now, Dr. Milbank was a favorite with the entire 
Chiltern crowd, and, as Mrs. Chiltern always moved 
into town on the first of November, nothing would have 
been easier than for Dolly to indicate the house on Fifty- 
seventh Street as the place of rendezvous for lunch. 

But the boy was meditating a kindness, and he felt 
shy and guilty about it. “ Milbank” must manage the 
entire business for him, and they could talk it over 
better in one of the snug little private dining-rooms at 
the club, where the table was to be laid for two, than 
up home “among the women.” 

He was waiting for Milbank in one of the library 
alcoves at the club, at the precise moment when John 
Milbank was standing behind the portiere in Randall's 
studio, wrapped in contemplation of the sculptor’s mas- 
terpiece. 

Dolly was poring over a portfolio of engravings. He 
had seen the things a hundred times before, but he must 
do something with his eyes while waiting for Milbank. 

With his ears he was just then beginning to take note 


204 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


of the talk of two men in the next alcove. The jutting 
book-shelves shut them from view, but he believed he 
knew the voices. The talk had floated about him as the 
buzzing of insects, until he imagined he heard two 
names brought into it. 

The names were “Jeanne Lenox” and “Mackaye, 
the masher.” 

Dolly, with his elbows leaning on the table in front of 
him, and his chin supported in his palms, flushed from 
cheek to temple, but sat perfectly still to make sure he 
was not mistaken. 

No, he was not mistaken. Miss Lenox’s name came 
into the talk again. Then he got up, and laying the 
prints back in their portfolio with precision, he sauntered 
into the alcove where the two men gossips sat, their 
feet stretched before the glowing anthracite fire, and 
their newspapers lying across their knees. 

Both were old club-men — men who had tried life 
in its various aspects and found it lacking in flavor 
in all of them. Dolly lolled against the mantelpiece, 
one elbow resting on it as he looked down at them. 
There was a glitter in his blue eyes, which might have 
been caught from the flames of the anthracite fire — but 
was not. One of the men glanced up at him pleasantly : 

“Reynolds here was just telling me that Mackaye is 
down with a low fever. You know him, I believe.” 

“Yes, I know him. I believe he is ill. Overwork, 
they say, or something of that sort.” 

“A man is a fool to work for a living when he can 
make it without work. But perhaps he has yearnings — 
fame — immortal glory and all the rest of it, you know.” 

“ Perhaps ! There are some men, those who are not 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


205 


SO fortunate as to be born rich and satiated, who do 
have yearnings, as you call them. Or perhaps Mr. 
Mackaye has not discovered that secret of making a liv- 
ing without work, which you allude to.” 

“ It has not been the girl’s fault if he has not, then.’’ 

Which girl ? ” 

Dolly was still lounging languidly against the low 
marble mantel. One hand was gloved, and through it 
he was slowly drawing his empty glove. His glittering 
eyes were fastened on the men sitting there below him, 
and his strong young frame was vibrating to the pas- 
sion that filled every inner recess. 

‘ ‘ Which girl.? Why Jerome Lenox’s daughter. ‘ She has 
made a perfect fool of herself about the fellow, especial- 
ly since he has been laid up. ” 

Dolly’s face blanched, but his voice remained per- 
fectly steady. 

“ What has she done since he has been laid up .? ” 

“Nothing much — only visited his room every day, 
carrying flowers, etc., etc. 

“ Do you know that to be true.? ” 

‘ ‘ 1 know that to be true. ” 

“Then you are an infernal cad for not keeping it to 
yourself. ” 

The young voice was still steady, though fierce in its 
intense scorn, as Dolly leaned forward quickly and 
drew the fingers of his empty glove across the man’s 
lips. 

There was a start of amazement, — an audible oath or 
two, — a flash of silver hurtling through the air, and then 
Dolly Chiltern lay quite still, stunned by a blow from a 
heavy goblet taken from a tray near by. 


206 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


His assailant was kneeling over him, pouring abject 
apologies into his ears, when Dr. Milbank entered the 
room. Between them they got the tall form stretched 
upon a sofa, and their worst fears were relieved by the 
doctor’s prompt verdict : 

“ He is only stunned. Will come around presently. 
I should prefer, gentlemen, that he should see no one 
but me when he does come to himself. ” 

The men all went away, and Dr. Milbank worked 
with Dolly alone until the blue eyes opened with a 
startled expression, and he sat up suddenly, putting his 
hand to his temple. 

‘ ‘ What happened to me ? Oh — yes — curse him ! 
Where is he .? ” 

‘ ‘ Stuart } ” 

“Yes. ” 

“He is gone. But he left his humble apology with me 
for something. What was it, Dolly Have you been 
measuring lances with that antiquated old reprobate.? 
He is an ox for strength, Dolly. ” 

“He spoke insolently of a lady — and — I could not 
help it. Will this thing show .? ” he touched his temple 
with one finger. “Why, you’ve plastered me!” His 
face was full of disgust. 

“You’ve got an ugly cut there. The edge of the gob- 
let was sharp. ” 

“And that will involve a lie. I’ll have to explain 
that cut to five different women — tell a distinct lie five 
times over.” 

“Let me do it for you,” said Dr. Milbank, smding 
down into the white, boyish face on the sofa. “I think 
I can save you the lie, at least. ” 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


207 


^‘Then you'll be saving me the toughest part of it. 
It’s astonishing, Doctor, how good women will drive 
men into corners. But I say, Doctor, unless Stuart 
takes it back his apology won’t stand. I don’t want 
him to apologize to me for doing this” 

I think he means to make it entirely satisfactory. 
He said you should hear from him. I don’t know 
what you did, but it seems to have enhanced his respect 
for you.” 

“Then that’s all right. Now, then, tell me about 
Mackaye. This beastly business drove him clean out 
of my head for a while.” 

Dr. Milbank’s voice grew decidedly less pleasant : 

“ It is not a case for physic. The man has over- 
taxed his strength, and complete rest, with change of 
scene, is all that can help him. ” 

“ I thought as much myself,’^ said Dolly, reflectively ; 
“and that was the reason I wanted to see you here 
alone. Doctor. I want you to manage it for me. I 
don’t exactly know how to go about it. You do.” 

He was stammering and blushing most absurdly. 

“ You mean that you want to lend him the money to 
take a trip on, Dolly t ” 

‘ ‘ Exactly. ” 

“That’s good of you, and very much like Dolly Chil- 
tern. But how do you know he can’t afford it him- 
self.?’’ 

“ I take it he is not very prosperous yet. They say 
he’s been banking on this masterpiece ot his to bring 
him in something substantial. But that is not sold yet, 
you see. I might offer to buy that — couldn’t I, now .? 
You see, I don’t want him to suspect that its a sort of 


2o8 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


veiled charity, and he would suspect me, Doctor ; but 
if you were to offer to buy the statue it could not be 
anything but a purely commercial transaction. ’’ 

“No, oh no, it could not be anything but a purely 
commercial transaction with me. But it happens, 
Dolly, that the statue is not on the market. ’’ 

“ Not on the market ! 

“ No — not even to be exhibited.” 

“ Who says so } ” 

“ His father-in-law.” 

“Father-in-law!” 

“Yes. It seems that the statue was modelled from 
his own wife, and it was the shock of hearing that she 
was dead which brought about Ihis attack. ” 

Dolly Chiltern sat on the sofa, staring into Dr. Mil- 
bank’s face incredulously. Dr. Milbank returned his 
stare with eyes absolutely steady and grave. No one 
could have suspected that the tragedy of Randall Mac- 
kaye’s life touched both these men almost as nearly as 
it did himself. 

“Do you mean to tell me that he has lost his wife 
recently, Milbank .? ” 

“ The eighteenth day of August. 

Who knew the date better than he t 
Dolly sprang tempestuously to his feet. His face was 
purple with wrath. His hands were clenched until the 
nails indented his flesh. Dr. Milbank watched him in 
mute perplexity as he made the circuit of the long 
library, staggering like a drunken man. 

“You had better sit down, Chiltern. You’ve had 
something of a shock this morning, and you’re not at 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


209 

all steady on your feet. I don’t quite understand your 
present excitement. ” 

Dolly came back to the sofa and fell back upon its 
cushions with a sigh of profound depression. 

“ He is an accursed fraud, and I hope he may — ” 

“Come, don’t be childish, Dolly. What are you spitting 
out baby anathemas for.? Has this man Mackaye in- 
jured you in any way.? He seems to be in a good 
many people’s way.” 

Dolly looked up piteously. He would like very much 
to tell Milbank the whole story — but — perhaps — now 
that the wife was dead, Mackaye and Jeanne would get 
married, and then the gossips’ tongues would cease 
wagging. There was no knowing how much a woman 
would forgive a man if she loved him. 

“ Do you suppose he — Mackaye, knew his wife was 
living up to August, Doctor .? ” he asked, hoarsely. 

Dr. Milbank looked at him contemptuously. 

“Is it likely a man should have a wife living, a hand- 
some wife, too, Dolly, from whom he had never been 
divorced, and not know it .? ” - 

“But she is dead now?’^ 

“She is dead now.” 

“You are quite sure of that ? ” 

“Quite sure.” 

(Who so sure as he.?) 

“Thank God!” 

“ For what.? For the death of a woman .? Perhaps 
she was a true woman, Dolly, who could not bear con- 
tumely and neglect. Perhaps she was a brave woman, 
who dared follow her convictions even though they led 
her through the valley of the shadow of death. Per- 


210 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


haps she was a beautiful woman, who might have 
made the sunshine of some other man’s life, some man 
who knew how to deal with so fine a spirit. ” 

“ Perhaps— granted — all that and more. Still — thank 
God ! For now her fair fame can be saved. One preys 
upon another, Doctor.” 

He buried his head in the sofa cushions, and it seemed 
as if he would never raise it again. His frame was con- 
vulsed with a burst of grief which was no disgrace to 
his young manhood. 

John Milbank walked over to one of the windows 
and stood staring out into the street. It looked out 
over the avenue, and a stream ot glittering equipages, 
filled with well-dressed women, rolled by the line of his 
vision. They might have been so many stuffed dolls, 
in toy perambulators, for all he saw of them. 

He had gone back, as was his constant custom now, 
if he granted himself a moment’s retrospection, to that 
moment when he had turned away from Marianne, 
with hot words of condemnation, and left her standing, 
majestic in her mute sorrow, upon the rocks of Tea 
Island. 

“ I was a brute — a maddened brute. Even then I 
knew it.” 

He felt a touch on his shoulder, and Dolly’s arm fell 
about his neck caressingly. 

“ I want some advice. Doc, and it’s of the sort I can’t 
go to mother or the girls for. You are my only hope.” 

“ If mine will be worth anything to you it is entirely 
at your service. But let us sit down somewhere.” 

They walked away from the window arm-in-arm, 
Dolly led the way into the room where the table had 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


21 I 


been laid for their luncheon, and ordered it served. 

“We can talk here better. I was trying, as I lay 
there on the sofa, to make up my mind about some- 
thing, Doctor, and I can’t. I’m not sure of my own 
motives, you see. That always hobbles a fellow.” 

“Well, Dolly.?” 

“I’m in love with a girl. Doctor, a girl whom you 
will say must fall very little short of perfection, when I 
tell you that mother and the girls have courted her 
about as hard as I have. They all wanted it. ” 

“Strong testimony to her worth, Dolly.” 

“And 1 believe my chance with her was good. Doc- 
tor, more than good, until she met him.” 

‘ ‘ Whom .? The sculptor .? ” 

“Yes — Mackaye.” Dolly’s clear eyes darkened 
wrathfully. “ You see, nobody knew him for a married 
man — and — and — he’s won her affections, so that she’s 
had no eyes nor thought since for — anybody. I’ve 
winced under it, but I thought, until you told me about 
the wife, that it was all right, and I felt that it would be 
a shabby thing to let him lay there and die for the want 
of a little dirty money.” Here the boy suddenly lost all 
control of himself. “ He’s a scoundrel. Doctor, a black- 
hearted fraud. ” 

“I quite agree with you, Dolly ; but go on.” 

“And if the wife was living I’d know exactly where 
I stand. I would go to Mr. — the young lady*s father, 
I mean — and tell him to kick the fellow out of his doors 
the next time he darkened them. But as the wife is 
dead ” 

“You think it best to let her wed her black-hearted 
fraud in peace. Is that it, Dolly .? ” 


212 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


“Not exactly.” Dolly bowed his head in shame. 
The humiliation was for the woman he loved. “Not 
exactly that, Doctor ; but the gossips have got hold of 
her name — and ” 

“Ah, now I understand. By-the-way, my boy, your 
excitement has started the cut to bleeding again — 
permit me.” 

He went over and stood behind Dolly, arranging a 
fresh piece of plaster over the cut with cool, skilful 
fingers. It would be easier for Chiltern to talk with 
him standing behind him so. Dolly put a hand over 
his and gave it a slight pressure, which told him he was 
understood. 

“And perhaps I had better let things take their 
course. You see, she loves him. I know it. And I 
wouldn’t be sure of my own motives if I meddled. Not 
at all.” 

“She thinks she loves him. She is an untrained little 
mortal, who has what she calls an enthusiasm for art ; 
and when art presents itself in the guise of a handsome 
artist, many a silly heart flutters nervously with what 
it is pleased to call love. Miss Lenox is no exception 
to the rule of girls whose views of life are largely deter- 
mined for them by French maids. ” 

‘ ' Miss Lenox .? ” — Dolly faced upon him fiercely — 
“then have you too ” 

“ Known that you were in love with Jerome Lenox’s 
daughter } Quite a while, my dear boy. Ever since I 
saw you together at the last Patriarchs’.” 

“She is worthy any man’s devotion,” said Dolly, 
loyally. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


213 

‘‘I don’t doubt it. I don’t doubt it, at all, Dolly ; but 
as for this other matter.” 

“Well.?” 

“ I think I would let that rest, at least until it is sure 
that the man will not die.” 

“If money can save him. Doctor, he shall not die. 
Promise me that ! ” 

And Dr. Milbank promised. 


214 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


CHAPTER XXL 
Mrs. Roper was in tears. 

In point of fact that was getting to be Mrs. RopePs 
normal condition. She had always been what might 
be called a “ready crier/’ with an assorted lot of tears 
on hand— tears of anger, which she shed when a cus- 
tomer whom she dared not defy proved particularly 
trying ; tears of sympathy, which flowed most readily 
when she went to the theatre; spiritual tears, so to 
speak, which were evoked by her minister, and were 
associated with her Sunday bonnet and her five-button 
black-kid gloves. But the tears which she shed in the 
privacy of her own room, the morning after Dr. Mil- 
bank had paid his one visit to Randall, were tears of 
pure vexation, tears of such perplexity as she never had 
shed before. 

“There was the doctor saying Ran ought to leave 
town, even going so far as to mention Florence dis- 
tinctly ; and there was Ran declaring point-blank he 
would not go. Not that that amounted to a row of pins, 
for as like as not when she got back to the studio (she 
had just run home to see that Mrs. Rockwood’s bro- 
cade was not utterly ruined) he would be for starting 
off at two days’ notice. And when that notion struck 
him, who was to go with him r Where was the money 
to come from } ” 

Mrs. Roper asked and answered her own questions 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


215 


with tart energy. Of course she would have to go with 
him. Of course that five hundred dollars in the bank 
would have to be drawn out. Ran was her own flesh 
and blood, and she hoped the time never would come 
when she should forget what she had promised their 
mother. 

And while she was “gallivanting” all over the 
world what was to become of her business .? This was 
the question, excogitating an answer to which had 
finally thrown Mrs. Roper into a condition little short 
of hysteria. 

Some one knocked at the door. 

She dried her eyes quickly. Not for a “ clean thou- 
sand” would she have one of her work-girls find her in 
tears. They would go right off and report a falling-off 
in her custom. Her “Come in ” was as crisp, as chir- 
rupy as one would care to hear. 

Marianne entered the room with a small roll of bills 
in her hand. 

“You are so hard to find lately that I shall have to 
set a trap for you whenever my room rent falls due.” 

“Little thought have I been giving to room rent this 
week.” Mrs. Roper spoke disconsolately, but extended 
her hand for the bills. “There are more things in this 
world to bother about than money, Mrs. Fawcett.” 

“Many more. You are in trouble. Can I do any- 
thing for you .? ” 

“Not this time. It’s a graver matter than getting up 
a girl’s ball-dress. Do sit down, Mrs. Fawcett. It 
gives me the fidgets to have you standing up and me 
sitting ; but Fm that tired I’m ready to drop.” 

Marianne seated herself resignedly. Mrs. Ropers 


2i6 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


confidences had a propensity to string themselves out 
tediously, but the little dressmaker had hovered over 
her like a mother when she got back from her summer- 
ing, sick at soul and weary of body. 

“This is your busy season, I suppose.’' 

“It isn’t the work; I’m used to that; but I’m not 
used to nursing. I’m done up. ” 

“Sickness in the family.? Nothing serious, I hope.” 
Mrs. Roper straightened her cuffs with a little con- 
scious air of pride. After all, a brother whom the papers 
spoke of, and for whom a rich girl, belonging to the 
very first, was pining, was not a possession to scorn. 

“It is my brother — Mr. Randall Mackaye, the sculp- 
tor. You have heard me speak of him.” 

Over Marianne’s face, which, Mrs. Roper said, looked 
“ peakeder and whiter than ever, since her trip to Lake 
George,” a wave of crimson swept swiftly. 

“What of your brother.? Is he very ill .? ” 

“ Dear me, Mrs. Fawcett, if you ever read the news- 
papers you wouldn’t have to ask. Didn’t you see in the 
City Sewer that poor Ran had worked himself nearly to 
death to finish a statue .? Think of such foolishness ! ” 

“ And is it finished ? ” 

“ Yes ; but it came very near finishing him.” 

“Is it on exhibition? Has the world passed sen- 
tence on it .? Do they call him great .? Is he famous ? ” 
“ ‘Do they call him great.?’ I call him a bag of 
bones. ‘ Is he famous.?’ Maybe what there is left of 
him is, but that is precious little. Much good has his 
marble beauty done him, so far ! ” 

“ Have you seen it? ” 

“Only once; and then I didn’t see the face. The 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


217 

thing stands there finished, but a dusty old sheet hides 
it from everybody.” 

Marianne leaned back in her chair with a sigh. This 
was the moment she had been looking forward to ail 
these months. This first taste of fruition was exceed- 
ing bitter. 

“ 1 heard the old man tell the doctor that Ran meant 
never to have it put on exhibition, though I should 
think some of his rich friends — and he seems to have 
lots of them — -would give him thousands of dollars for 
it, on the principle of a fool and his money soon parted, 
you know.” 

Marianne winced. Was this fame? Was it to hear 
his masterpiece spoken of as a peddler might speak of 
his plaster mannikins, that she had stepped aside and 
given him his freedom ? How queer that she should be 
catching the first echoes of Randall’s fame from the lips 
of this obscure dressmaker ! And this marketable thing 
was the statue into which two lives had been moulded 
— hers and his. 

“Why is the statue not to be exhibited ? ” At least 
she would know all that Randall’s sister knew. 

“The dear only knows. Nobody has honored me 
with an explanation. All I know I caught by making 
use of my ears when the old man and the doctor were 
talking. And I may not even have that straight. ” 

“Well, whatever it is, let me have it.” 

“Well, I think I heard the old man tell the doctor 
that since Ran had heard of his wife’s death he had 
sworn the statue should never be exhibited.” 

Marianne gazed at Mrs. Roper stupidly. Was she 
inventing a romance? Or was Randall, for evil pur- 


2i8 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


poses of his own, giving out the impression that she 
was dead ? She flung this vile suspicion away from her 
with a gesture of physical repulsion. 

“You say his wife is dead? ’’ 

“Yes, dead ; and the outrageous part of it is nobody 
knew he had one until the old man let it out, which I 
wish he hadn’t, for since she is dead. Ran might have 
done much better and married — there now, how my old 
tongue does get away with me ! ” 

‘ ‘ Who says his wife is dead ? ” 

Marianne was looking at her dully. It was almost 
as if she were listening to another woman’s story, one 
which did not concern her even remotely. Mrs. Roper’s 
patience was on the wane. 

“The old man, I suppose, Mrs. Fawcett. I heard 
him • telling the doctor something about a telegram 
which he showed Ran too sudden. Both men seem 
awfully cut up about it. ” 

“ What a pity it isn’t true ! ” 

Marianne laughed aloud, a short, discordant, mirth- 
less laugh, as she uttered those bitter words. Mrs. 
Roper stared in her turn. 

Her lodger had flung her hands outward with a ges- 
ture of impatient despair, and was now beating them 
slowly together, almost as though she were undergoing 
some sharp physical agony. 

“So this is the outcome. This is what comes of 
having high ideals and trying to force other people to 
live up to them. How many lives have I ruined? ” 
Bewildered Mrs. Roper, failing utterly to comprehend 
this wild outbreak, but catching the words of a strange 
question, answered stupidly : 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


219 

“My dear, you don’t look as if you’d ever ruined any- 
body’s life. What does ail you, Mrs. Fawcett.'^ ” 

Marianne brought her eyes back to the little black 
figure in the chair before her. 

“I think I will go to him, Mrs. Roper, at once.” 

“ Go to -who .? ” 

“To Randall — your brother — my husband.” 

‘ ‘ Randall Macka5''e your husband .? ” 

“Yes.” 

“And — then you’re not dead, after all. Why, how 

Marianne raised her hand imperiously. She would 
make her explanation but once, and then not to Mrs. 
Roper. 

“No doubt you will soon know all there is to know, 
Mrs. Roper. At present I must go to Randall and to 
father.” 

Mrs. Roper laid a detaining hand on her arm as she 
got up from her chair. 

“ Did you and Ran have a falling-out, Mrs. ” 

“Call me Marianne. We are sisters-in-law, you 
know. ” 

“ Yes, and I always did feel drawn toward you — but 
was there no divorce, my dear ? ” 

“None.” 

Marianne wrenched herself free and went away to 
get her bonnet and wrap. Mrs. Roper looked after her 
gravely. 

This was not quite so grand a thing as marrying 
Jeanne Lenox would have been, but as sure as her 
name wms Rebecca Roper she was going to let that 
sweet girl know how she had been duped. It made her 


220 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


honest cheeks burn for shame, to think that Randall 
could have grown up into that sort of man. 

She was standing on the stoop waiting for Marianne. 
They left the house together. 

“ Did you and Ran have a falling-out, dear.?” 

‘‘No, not as you mean it. I made a mistake. I 
believed that he would make a position for himself 
easier and quicker without me than with me. I meant 
to leave him unhampered for his work. I believe I was 
more ambitious for him than he was for himself. ” 

“Unhampered for his work ! Unhampered for his 
deviltry you mean. My dear, don’t you know that 
men like Ran need to be driven to work. I used to 
have to drive him to school. Yes, you made a big 
mistake. He’ll get well fast enough now, but ” 

“ But what.?” 

“Nothing. Only do get him up and away as soon 
as possible. My head’s dizzy with all this excitement. 
I never was as near daft in my born days. . If I don’t 
spoil the next dozen dresses I cut out it will be a special 
providence preventing.” 

As Marianne walked slowly by her side toward the 
studio, she realized for the first time how heavy was 
the yoke she was about to assume once more. Her 
footsteps lagged. Her heart made no plea for the sick 
man lying yonder. She was going back to do her duty 
by him ; that was all. 

In the bitter self-analysis which had formed her chief 
occupation during the sombre hours of her lonely life, 
she had said over and over again, in a pitiful sort of 
self-defence: “I did love him. I loved him with all 
my pure, young, girlish heart ; but he killed jt with his 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


22 I 

selfishness, killed it with his arrogant acceptance of my 
all as his simple due. And this is what it has brought 
us to ! ” 

She drew back when they reached the studio door. 
It was closed. They could hear a murmur of voices 
inside. 

“ Send father to me here — and— prepare him— Randall 
— for my coming. I must see father first. Just tell him 
a lady wants to see him.” 

She turned from the door behind which Randall lay, 
and, walking to the farthest end of the long corridor, 
stood looking out upon the square. The year s first 
flakes of snow were sifting softly earthward through 
the leafless branches of the trees. What a sad, gray, 
old world it was ! 

She heard a slow, shuffling step coming along the 
corridor. Then she turned and ran toward the feeble 
old man who was tottering towards her. Her arms 
were about his neck, and her tears were raining on his 
cheeks, before he had fairly comprehended what had 
happened. 

“I wanted to see you first, father; you alone. I 
wanted to beg your pardon for all that I’ve made you 
suffer. I did not know until half-an-hour ago what you 
had endured, father — my patient, precious father.” 

“It has been hard, darling, hard; but I thought I 
was being punished for the way I treated you that last 
night, my sweet But, thank God ! I’ve got you back, 
got you back.” 

He was stroking the head that lay on his shoulder 
ivith his trembling old hand. Her words of endearment 


222 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


were poured close into his ears. Yes, it was sweet — 
sweet to be in each other’s arms again. 

“But what did Lockhart mean, honey? Such a 
positive telegram as it was, too ! No wonder it mowed 
Ran and me down.” 

Marianne raised her head and pushed her hair back 
with a weary gesture. 

“ It was a mistake, father — one more mistake. Every- 
thing is a mistake. Don’t you think so, father ? ” 

“ Yes, dearie ; at least it looks that way sometimes. 
But this particular mistake ? ” 

“Came of believing people to be honest who were 
dishonest. I was on an island with — a — person. We 
had gone to get berries for Cousin Miranda. Sorriebody 
moved our skiff, for a jest, I suppose, and when he 
couldn’t find it, he swam over to the mainland to get 
another one. The person, I mean. While he was gone 
I found our skiff — and — and — I did not want to go back 
to Cousin Lockhart’s, father, so I just rowed myself to 
the shore, and paid a man I found in a fisherman’s hut 
some money on his promising to take the skiff back to 
Mr. Lockhart and to tell him the lady was all right. I 
suppose the skiff was more valuable than I knew, so he 
just kept it, and as they never heard from me, they sent 
that cruel telegram. I never thought of such a possi- 
bility.” 

“Yes, yes. The telegram was what made it hurt so 
bad. But only this morning, dearie, I got a letter from 
Miranda, telling me that she had been trying to find out 
how to get a letter to me, and she and Davie were such 
poor hands at writing, not having anybody to write To, 
you see, that it was a big undertaking, especially as 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


223 


she would not write until she got some black-edged 
paper to write on ! Think of that, sweet ? ” 

The old man laughed gleefully. His heart was light, 
Nan-nan was back. It was so easy to laugh to-day. 

“It was a real kind letter. Nan-nan. She told me 
how fond they had all got to be of you up yonder. 
And she told me how a gentleman boarder of hers 
most near went wild when they couldn’t find you, and 
blamed himself for it all. And how he — 

“Come,’' said Marianne, huskily — “she has prepared 
Randall for my coming by this time.” 

She held his hand and dragged him swiftly along the 
corridor with her, too swiftly for him to continue his 
narration. Mrs. Roper was standing in an attitude of 
helpless despair in front of Randall’s lounge. Her eyes 
turned wistfully towards Marianne as she entered : 

“Come and do it yourself, or undo it — I don’t know 
which — I can’t. ” 

Marianne was not of those who still believed Randall 
to be made of such very fine porcelain that he must be 
handled with exceeding care. Her own theory of his 
breakdown was that he had simply worked very hard 
during a hot season, as much from ennui as anything 
else, and was suffering the consequences of his impru- 
dence. 

She came and leaned over him : 

‘ ‘ It was a mistake, Randall, that telegram. I will tell 
you more when you are stronger. Are you glad to see 
me back now — that the masterpiece is done .? ” 

He lifted himself on his elbows, turned his startled 
eyes upon her, and then fell back among the pillows, 


224 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


trembling violently. From beneath his closed lids two 
great tears rolled over his thin cheeks. 

It was an unexpected display to Marianne. Perhaps, 
after all, there were depths here she had never sounded. 

She knelt down by his side and, smoothing his long 
black hair away from his sunken temples, kissed him 
gently on the forehead. 

He turned his lips toward her ear to whisper : 

“Nan-nan, forgive me. I never knew what you were 
to me until I thought I had lost you forever. But I 
knew you would come back to me, via belle, if you were 
alive.” 

He had his arms about her, and she was smoothing 
his brow with soft, soothing touches. 

Mrs. Roper stole away and went home. “The recon- 
ciliation was beautiful to see, and, thank heaven ! she 
wouldn’t have to go to Florence.” 

Mr. Grayson brushed his hand across his brow and 
tiptoed out into the corridor : ‘ ‘ The reconciliation was 
complete, and man and wife were truly one once more.” 

When they were alone, IMarianne drew herself out of 
her husband’s arms to ask the questions which were 
scorching her very heart : 

“Randall, did you want me to comeback.? Did I 
make a mistake in thinking you could work better with- 
out me ? Have you found out whether you need me or 
not .? ” 

He was looking at her critically, as she still knelt 
there before his lounge, her hands clasped tightly, her 
large eyes fixed supplicatingly on his face. Already the 
glad surprise of having her back was tempered by a 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


225 


great dissatisfaction. She had grown almost plain. She 
looked old and haggard. 

“Need you, Nan-nan .? I need you every hour.” 

The words left nothing to be desired. The tone — 
everything. He turned his eyes from her face to the 
statue : 

“ It is finished, Nan-nan. Go and look at it. I want 
to know what you think of it. Idealized, you will say. 

Marianne got up from her knees and, walking over to 
the alcove, unveiled the statue. She stood before it a 
long, long time in that quaint attitude of deliberate criti- 
cism which Randall remembered so well. 

But she was not criticising it all that time. She was 
thinking of all the strange things that had come to pass 
since she had stood just so before. She was thinking 
of all the lives that had become involved about that 
marble effigy of herself. Jeanne Lenox, spoiled, reck- 
less, ignorant — passed before her ; and John Milbank, 
haughty, scornful, indignant — as she had last seen him. 

“Well.?” 

Randall was calling to her in a voice tinctured with 
the old-time imperious impatience. 

“ It is a grand piece of work. It is perfect. I am 
proud of — it. But you are right ; it is idealized.” 

“You have lost tone, nia belle — grown a trifle 
angular. But we will both come back from Florence 
as good as new. Read that. ” 

He took a note from the stand at his elbow and threw 
it into Marianne s lap. It was a note from a down- 
town banker, offering him six thousand dollars for his 
masterpiece. 

“And you will take it ? ” 


226 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


‘ ‘ Without question. When that idiotic telegram came 
1 felt for a little while that there was too much of you 
in it, Nan-nan, for me to convert it into hard cash ; but 
now that I have you back I see it in a different light. ” 

“Yes — of course.’' 

Then he entered with feverish unrest into the details 
for their journey. He thought of Jeanne Lenox, and 
fancied he should be more comfortable if the sea were 
between them until “the thing had blown over.” 

He had made an awful fool of himself in that direc- 
tion, but he didn’t suppose he was the first man who 
had ever made a fool of himself. On the whole it was 
very comfortable to lie there and watch Marianne 
moving about the studio. 

And Marianne .? 

She recognized more clearly than ever that she had 
across to bear. 

He had not missed her ; he had missed her ministra- 
tions. He had not sorrowed over her ; he had mourned 
for the desolation that made life such a dismal affair for 
him. He had not completed the masterpiece of his 
life from any lofty idea of achievement ; it had been a 
great means to a small end. He was the same splen- 
did egotist who had gone away from the studio that 
morning with a cruel taunt upon his lips. But she had 
cast her one die — and lost. 

With a sense of defeat upon her she once more took 
up her cross. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


227 


CHAPTER XXII. 

Jeanne Lenox, stationed behind the lace curtains of 
the parlor windows in her own home, was also watch- 
ing those first snow-flakes of the year. 

At least, so it appeared to Miss Hildah, who was 
lounging in a big chair before the fire. In reality, 
Jeanne was watching for Florence. 

She had sent her maid on an errand, and she had 
been in a dozen different minds about that errand in as 
many minutes since dispatching her. 

The embroidered edges of the lace curtains were 
suffering at her hands. Her nervous little fingers had 
tugged at them with such unconscious energy that they 
had yielded to the unusual strain in several places, 
showing ugly, jagged rents. 

She was certain that Florence had been absent long 
enough to have gone to the studio and back “forty 
times.” She had never ventured there herself since en- 
countering Mrs. Roper ; but how could she let the days 
roll over his “poor, sick head ” without letting him 
know that somebody besides the doctor and the hired 
nurse was thinking about him and caring for him .? 

Had she not told him that she would wait patiently 
until he was great } And would it not comfort him 
now in his pain and loneliness to know that she was 
not forgetting her proipise .? 

She was sure she had done just the very “best 


22 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


thing,” and she was nof at all sorry. Only, if that 
horrid Florence would not dally so. 

A moment later Miss Hildah, turning her eyes toward 
the window to make an observation to her niece upon 
the execrable promptness with which fall had set in, 
found that Jeanne was not there. She had disappeared 
with the most mysterious suddenness, “without even 
the rustle of a petticoat,” the old lady muttered queru- 
lously, taking refuge once more in her crochet work. 

Jeanne’s watch really had terminated with remarkable 
suddenness. She had seen Florence — and — in her 
hands were the flowers she had sent Randall Mackaye 
and what looked like her own note. 

She was in her own room by the time Florence 
found her, tossing the contents of her top bureau drawer 
about with a reckless assumption of indifference which 
was entirely thrown away on the experienced French- 
woman. 

Florence walked across the room and placed the 
roses in a pitcher of water, before making her report. 

“We have made a mistake,” she said, coolly, laying 
Jeanne’s note down on the toilette table before her. 

The wax seal was unbroken. 

Mistress and maid looked at each other silently. 
Jeanne’s face was white to the very lips, and there was 
a startled look in her great innocent eyes. 

“I am sorry I could not- deliver them, but it was 
impossible.” 

“And — why ? ” 

“Because Monsieur’s wife has returned, and it would 
have been manifestly indiscreet. • I could not risk my 
young lady’s reputation so thoughtlessly.” 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


229 


“ His — wife ! ’’ 

Florence, the maid, experienced a fleeting sensation 
of pity. After all, this white, trembling girl before her 
was not a Lady Eunice. But “this white, trembling 
girl had once tried to dismiss her insolently, and Hor- 
ence never forgave. 

“Monsieur’s wife,” she repeated. “ It would seem 
that their quarrel is quite made up. The janitor says 
everybody is happy, and now Monsieur will get well. 
Let us hope so.” 

She knew that every word which fell from her thin, 
cruel lips struck its own distinct stab to the young heart 
of her mistress. Jeanne made a feeble effort to say 
something, but she could find neither words nor voice. 
She would like to say something calm and cleverly de- 
ceitful — something which would make Florence be- 
lieve that she had known all along that Randall Mac- 
kaye had a wife, and that her own courtesy to him had 
been simply the courtesy of an art patron. 

Poor little Jeanne ! No clever lie would come at her 
bidding. She just sat there before her tormentor, feel- 
ing all the rich, warm blood that had been bounding in 
her young veins turning to ice, and leaving her cold 
and numb. She shivered as if with a physical chill. 
She was slowly tearing the note into bits. 

Florence was behind her in a moment, tenderly 
wrapping a shawl about her trembling shoulders. 

“And, Miss Lenox, 1 have other news for you. My 
friend, the janitor, gave it to me. He got it from the 
elevator boy at the studio building, and I believe the 
elevator boy heard it from the man of the gentleman 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


230 

who picked Mr. Chiltern up, but of that I am not quite 
sure. ” 

In a bewildered way Jeanne gathered that her maid 
had picked up some news among the lacqueys ; but 
why should she intrude it upon her ? -What was Dolly 
Chiltern to her.? Florence had meant to divert her. 
Well, she would be diverted, if only to show her that 
this news about the sculptor meant nothing to her — 
literally nothing. 

She turned her face towards the open drawer once 
more, and bent over a mass of tangled ribbons. 

“Well, Florence, what about the gentleman’s man, 
and the elevator boy, and Mr. Chiltern who was picked 
up .? That has such a disreputable sound.” 

“The janitor says he is very badly injured, perhaps 
will carry the scar to his grave. At least, so one of 
the waiters at the club told the gentleman’s man who 
picked him up. I mean the man of the gentleman who 
picked him up.” 

“ Scar to his grave ! Poor Mrs. Chiltern ! She must 
be almost crazy. But what was he doing .? Did your 
footmen and your waiters tell you that .? ” 

“He was defending a lady’s honor. Mr. Chiltern is 
of the knightly sort, only Miss Lenox never seemed to 
discern it.” 

Jeanne was looking at her again with that wild, 
hunted look, which ought to have disarmed her, but it 
did not. On the contrary, this “affair” had so many 
points of similarity with her dear Lady Eunice’s ro- 
mance that Florence quite revelled in it. As a rule she 
had found service in America rather devoid of interest. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


231 

The American women were tame, flat, timid. None of 
them had the esprit of her dear Lady Eunice. 

It was suddenly borne in upon Jeanne that Dolly 
may have been fighting her battle. She laughed reck- 
lessly. Better brave it out if she could. She supposed 
that was all that a woman could do when she found 
her name was being dragged througl^ the mire. There 
was a fevered spot on her cheeks now, and her eyes 
were literally ablaze. 

“Who was the lady, Florence, that Mr. Chiltern de- 
fended in drayman’s style I Did your footman give 
her name ? ” 

“I do not know the lady’s name. My friend the 
janitor did not give it to me. I thought Miss Lenox 
would be interested, because she knows Mr. Chiltern 
and his lady mother and all the sweet young ladies of 
the family.” 

“ Yes — I — am — sorry. Poor Mrs. Chiltern ! ” 

She was not thinking of chivalric Dolly Chiltern. She 
had forgotten all about him, even as the words passed 
her lips. She was thinking of Randall Mackaye, and of 
the intensity of her hatred for him. How “ queer” that 
one drop of gall could turn love into hatred with such 
celerity ! 

She was casting about her confusedly for some way 
out of this escla?idre which should not make total 
wreck of her self-respect. Her ideas of right and wrong 
seemed suddenly turned topsy-turvey. She was glad 
her father was still in Europe. Things “blew over,” 
she supposed. But, oh for some strong, wise, good 
woman friend ! — somebody to put loving arms about 
her and tell her what to do, what to say, what to leave 


232 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


undone, what not to say ! Could she ever face the 
world again ? 

And while Jeanne wrestled alone with the horror and 
the shame of Randall Mackaye’s perfidy, MissHildah sat 
by the parlor fire crocheting a woollen cap to be put in 
the next missionary box, and Florence moved noise- 
lessly about the room, laying out Jeanne's dinner-dress. 

These two were all the girl’s womankind ! 

“I suppose we will hear it all to-morrow,” said the 
Frenchwoman, carefully pulling out the ribbon bows 
on the sleeves of the dress she had thrown on the bed. 
Her back was turned to Jeanne. 

“Hear what in the papers to-morrow ? ” 

“About the trouble at the club — the lady’s name, 
and so on. Fortunate lady ! Now she will become the 
fashion ! My Lady Eimice one said ” 

She heard a short, quick gasp behind her. Jeanne’s 
head fell forward on the toilette table before her. She 
had fainted. 

Florence laid her quietly on the bed and cut her cor- 
set strings. She was well-trained in such service. It 
made her think better of Jeanne. She was not such a 
little plebeian after all. It was only your true aristocrat 
who could and did suspend animation at the proper 
juncture. 

Jeanne opened her eyes after awhile and looked up 
into the cynical face of her French maid. She could 
never remember looking into a mother’s eyes. 

“What is the matter with me, Florence.? I feel so 
stupid. ” 

“ Miss Lenox fainted. That is all. One’s affaire 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


233 

always excites one unduly. Miss Lenox had better try 
to go to sleep. 

Jeanne turned her face wearily to the wall. Yes, she 
would like to sleep. It seemed pleasant to think of going 
to sleep and forgetting. 

The maid placed the tall Japanese screen between the 
foot of the bed and the window. She would not be 
needed for some hours, she felt quite sure. In the 
meantime, perhaps there had been some developments 
at the studio. The janitor was under a promise to 
keep her “posted.” She would go back to him. 

Jeanne sobbed herself to sleep. No tears would come 
to cool her hot dry lids as long as Florence was in the 
room, but as soon as she found herself quite alone, the 
pent-up torrent broke forth with plebeian violence. 

But all her tears had been shed, and all her bitterness 
exhausted, and she was sleeping like a little tired child 
when Miss Hildah came limping into the room, her 
cane punctuating her progress audibly. She came over 
to Jeanne’s bedside and looked at her wonderingly. 

“Was the child sick, and never a word to her about 
it } She was made of precious small importance in this 
world, of none to Jeanne lately — ” 

“Jeanne ! ” 

Jeanne started up in affright. The room was almost 
dark. Miss Hildah was standing over her, looking fret- 
ful. Was there any more trouble for her to hear about.? 

“Are you sick, Jeanne ? ” 

“No ” — she began winding her disordered hair around 
her head — “ no. I’m not sick, Aunt Hildah.” 

“You look like it. Your cheeks are fiery red. I do 
believe you have fever. Let me see your tongue.” 


234 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


“I am not sick, Aunt Hildah, and I do not care to 
show you my tongue.” 

“Well, well, don't get snappish. There is a person 
here, Jeanne, who wants to see you. She says she wants 
to see you very much, on particular business.’’ 

“ Did she send in her card .? ” 

“No. She says you don’t know her, but she begs 
you will not refuse to see her. ” 

“ Have you seen her .? ” 

“ Yes. Jansen showed her into the parlor. I should 
say she was a lady, in spite of her extremely plain dress. 
Begging for some charity, I suppose. Shall I tell her 
you are sick } ” 

“ But I am not sick ; and I think I should rather en- 
joy hearing about poor people and miserable people, 
just now. Aunt Hildah. Send her in here, please.” 

“Enjoy hearing about poor and miserable people ! 
Jeanne Lenox, you are enough to make one a convert 
to the theory of original depravity.” 

Miss Hildah thumped out of the room, and Jeanne, 
getting off the bed, completed the coiling of her hair just 
as the door opened to admit her visitor. 

Miss Hildah had opened it without ceremony, and, 
over the strange woman’s shoulders, was casting a 
severely warning look at Jeanne : 

“ I have told the lady, Jeanne, that we have so many 
calls on us from our own church that we rarely step 
aside for strangers. ” 

“Yes, Aunt Hildah, but I will make my own state- 
ments, if you please.” 

Her visitor was throwing back the, hood to her water- 
proof, which she had drawn over her bonnet to protect 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


235 

it from the dry, powdery snow. She was looking at 
Jeanne with a strange intensity. She felt quite sure 
that the child had been shedding many and bitter tears. 

“My dear,’’ she said, “I have come here begging, 
but it is not for any church charity. I have come here 
to beg your pardon, and— if possible — to right a great 
wrong I have helped to do you.” 

“ I — don’t understand you. Who are you.'^ ” 

The black waterproof lay on the back of a chair now, 
and there stood revealed to Jeanne’s eyes a majestic- 
looking woman, whose grave eyes were resting upon 
her with a sort of wistful pity. 

“I am Marianne Mackaye, Randall Mackaye’s wife. 
And I want to be your friend. ” 

Jeanne put out a hand suddenly towards the mantel- 
piece. She needed something to lean upon. But her 
slight form was drawn to its upmost height, and her 
pretty face was turned defiantly upon Marianne. 

“Did your husband send you here, Mrs. Mackaye, 
to plead for him, the impostor? Has he told you how 
he won the friendship of Jerome Lenox and his 
daughter ?” 

Marianne held up her hand commandingly. 

“I think you must let me make things a little clearer. 
Miss Lenox. Then you will see that I came here of my 
own accord with the earnest desire to serve you. He 
does not know I am here.” 

“To serve me ! ” 

“To serve you. Sit down, my child. I have suffered 
too much myself not to recognize the signs of it hi 
others. I will not detain you long.” 

Jeanne sat down in a strangely docile mood. There 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


236 

was something inexpressibly soothing in this woman’s 
low, cultured voice, something imposing in her qi iet 
self-possession. 

“You imagine, do you not, my dear, that the world, 
all your world, will soon be wagging its head over 
Jeanne Lenox’s folly. You imagine how the story of 
your giving your first girl’s fancy (only a fancy, dear !) 
to a married man Here she was fiercely inter- 

rupted. 

“ He is a wretch ! Don’t mention his name in my 
presence. I hate him ! Oh, how I loathe him ! ” 

“I do not intend to insult you by mentioning his 
name any oftener than is needful. It is only because I 
feel largely responsible for your trouble that I dared 
come to you. I am here for your good, and yours 
alone. Miss Lenox, please believe that, and hear me 
quietly to the end.” 

Jeanne’s breast was heaving tumultuously, but she 
made a gesture for Marianne to proceed. 

“When I went away from my husband, with a view 
to testing his ability for earnest effort, it was because 
the wealthy patrons of art here in the city were begin- 
ning to notice him, and I imagined I was a drag on his 
ambition. Indeed, he told me so. I was not far-seeing 
enough to calculate some of the evil possibilities of 
giving him his liberty. He had never been what is 
called a lady’s man. In fact, I think I knew he was 
too self-absorbed ever to form a deep attachment for 
any woman. I believed he wanted his freedom as an 
artist, and I gave it to him. But that his handsome face 
and smooth ways might ever prove a snare to others I 
had never thought, or, if I did, I put it away from me 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


237 


as the foolish fancy of a jealous woman. For that result 
of my blindness I am here to beg your pardon and to 
make reparation. 

^‘What reparation can you make.?” Jeanne asked, 
bitterly. 

Marianne looked at her with a wistful smile. 

“My dear, you have already found out that the only 
wound is to your pride. ” 

“Yes — I have; but that wound ” 

“ Is the one I am here to heal.” 

“Then be quick about it. I am smarting at every 
pore. I will die of the shame of it. ” 

“What church do you attend.?^' Marianne asked, 
abruptly. 

Jeanne, wondering more and more at her own docility 
throughout this strange interview, gave the name and 
location of her church. 

“ It is a large and a fashionable one ? ” 

“Yes. ” 

“Your pew conspicuous ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“Then, my dear, I wish to accompany you to church 
to-morrow. ” 

Jeanne started and colored violently. 

“ Do not be afraid that you will ever have to recog- 
nize me afterwards,” said Marianne, proudly ; “but here 
is a paragraph I wish to have inserted in a society 
column on Monday. All the world, your world, will 
read it ; and all the world, your world, will wag its 
wise head and say, ‘ We must have made a mistake — 
there is nothing wrong there.' It will be a disappoint- 
ment to them, for doubtless they think just now that they 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


238 

have an unusually sweet morsel to roll under their 
tongues. 

‘‘I wish I might know you — have you for a friend. 
You must be strong, and good, and unselfish, or you 
never would have thought of sheltering me. For I am 
wicked — desperately wicked. ” 

Marianne smiled down upon the troubled child with 
a sort of wistful tenderness. She was so young and 
unsheltered. 

‘‘My dear, ’" she said, “if a little white dove, who 
had been robbed of its brooding mother, should tumble 
ignorantly from its soft nest into the mud and the mire of 
the roadside and soil its pretty wings, would you pass 
by on the other side and call that little white dove a 
desperately wicked thing ? "" 

Jeanne put out both hands impulsively. 

“ If I were like you, she said, “I suppose I would 
pick the silly thirg up, smooth its soiled plumage, and 
put it back in its nest. " 

Tears were shining in her eyes. Marianne, drawing 
her close within the shelter of her arms, laid the tired 
young head on her shoulder. 

“ And that is just what I want to do, my dear. It is 
only the plumage that is soiled, and mine be the hand 
to smooth it. "" 

It was a strange scene, but one upon which the 
angels must have smiled. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


239 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

Dr. Milbank, obeying a summons from Mrs. Chiltern, 
who was afraid ‘‘Maria’s sore throat was developing 
diphtheretic features,” found the five ladies, who con- 
stituted what Dolly had irreverently called his “ Home 
Guard,” in a tremendous flutter about something. 

Maria’s sore throat was almost lost sight of entirely, 
and the doctor made his examination amidst a pleasant 
chatter of women’s tongues. He was pelted with bits of 
information from five different points of the compass at 
once. Mrs. Chiltern led off by right of seniority and 
acknowledged leadership : 

“A letter from Adolphus, Doctor. They are turning 
their faces homeward.” ^ 

“Coming on the Umbria.’’ 

“And Mrs. Mackaye is coming with them. Jeanne 
says she is the best-known lady artist in Florence.” 

“Poor Mrs. Mackaye! Dolly says she persistently 
refused to appear in society at first, but you know he 
has been dead quite two years now.” 

“No!” Maria’s tongue was just loosed from the 
bondage Dr. Milbank had been holding it in for pro- 
fessional purposes. “ Two years next month.” Maria 
prided herself on always being accurate. “Don’t you 
know, it was the very day after Dolly and Jeanne were 
married that we read in the papers about his being 


240 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


killed in a runaway accident, and we all said, ‘How 
shocking ' ? 

“And, Doctor, you have gotten us into business/ 

Dr. Milbank looked at Mrs. Chiltern with polite curi- 
osity. 

His fancy had travelled half-way across the ocean 
during Maria's lucid setting of everybody right, chron- 
ologically. It had flown to meet and to greet Marianne 
on her homeward way. 

“ I hope I haven’t got you into a troublesome sort of 
business,” he said, smiling at Mrs. Chiltern. 

“Oh, dear, no. You know, if we do adore anything 
it is spending other people’s money for them. But I 
mean, since we wrote Dolly and Jeanne about how 
beautifully we had furnished your house for you, they 
seemed to think we have gone into the upholstering bus- 
iness permanently, and now they want us to furnish 
another house. ” 

“For them .? I thought they were going to live with 
Mr. Lenox.” 

“For them.? no indeed. Mr. Lenox told Adolphus, 
when he gave Jeanne to him, that if he took her away 
from him he should commit suicide. But — you know, 
Doctor, Jeanne, my daughter-in-law, is simply wrapped 
up in Mrs. Mackaye.” 

“ Naturally,” said John Milbank, while a warm glow 
suddenly suffused his fine face. 

“ As you say, naturally. The way that poor woman, 
suffering and smarting as she must have been herself, 
sheltered Jeanne from the faintest whisper of calumny 
was beautiful.” 

“ Beautiful ! ” was echoed four times, softly. 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST, 


241 


“ Why, she actually made the gossips feel silly. She 
is a grand woman, Dr. Milbank. I wish you knew her.” 

“ Perhaps I shall some day,” said the doctor, with an 
inscrutable smile. ‘ ‘ But we are getting a long way 
from the upholstery business, aren’t we } ” 

“Miles ! ” said Maria, in a thick voice. 

“Well, it is just this. Jeanne and Adolphus are re- 
solved on doing a very pretty thing. And there’s no 
reason why they should not. Mr. Lenox knows about 
it, and he wants to bear the entire expense, but that 
would not be fair to Adolphus. ” 

“ Not at all fair,” the well-trained chorus echoed. 
“They want us to find an apartment, and, dear me ! 
that is a trouble. It must be in a fashionable part of 
town ; have splendid light for Mrs. Mackaye to paint 
by ; and must not be too large, for she will be by herself, 
excepting for servants. 

‘ ‘ I should think her father would want to live with her. ” 
“ Father ? ” 

“Has she a father.? ” 

“How did you know. Doctor.” 

“ Where is he now .? ’’ 

“Who was she. Doctor.?” 

Dr. Milbank for once fully appreciated the tutelage 
to which Dolly had spent a life apprenticeship. It was 
dreadful to have to account for a careless remark to 
five different women. 

“ I’m sure I don’t know — anything at all. I just im- 
agined, I suppose, that she might have a father. Go on, 
my dear Mrs. Chiltern ; I am deeply interested in this 
pretty little scheme of Dolly’s and his wifes. ’ 

“Well — after we have found the impossible and se- 


242 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


cured the unattainable, we are to furnish it according to 
our united tastes, without regard to cost.” 

‘ ‘ That is the nicest part of all. I adore poking around 
in carpet stores.” 

“And buying silver.” 

“And bric-a-brac.” 

“Only she is an artist.” 

“And may have views of her own.” 

John Milbank was quite sure that the woman for 
whom this pretty surprise was to be prepared had views 
of her own. He sat caressing his close-cropped mutton- 
chops absently while the discussion raged about him. 

“ How long a time to do all this in .? ” he asked, sud- 
denly waking up again. 

“ Three miserable little w'eeks.” 

“That is short.” 

“Short ! It is no time at all. ” 

‘ ‘ Suppose I were to tell you that I believe I know of 
an apartment which would suit your friend in every par- 
ticular — that is, perhaps ; and that, as I would like to 
accommodate the owner, I should esteem it a personal 
favor if you held this matter in abeyance until she has 
examined these rooms.” 

“ Can we see them ? Are they newly furnished } ” 

“They are newly furnished and rather pretty. But 
as for your seeing them at present, I can’t say. The 
proprietor of the house occupies the parlor floor. The 
suite I speak of is up one flight. I should think it em- 
bodied everything a lady would want, and if Mrs, Chil- 
tern approves I could send her word when the rooms 
could be seen. ” 

Suddenly a bright idea struck him. It would be ab- 


SPLENDID EGOTIST, 243 

solutely necessary to take one woman into his confi- 
dence. 

“My coupe is at the door; suppose you let me drive 
you there now, Mrs. Chiltern. It may save all of you 
ladies a world of trouble.’’ 

All five of them would have liked immensely to go 
on this tour of inspection, but as the coupe would only 
hold two, and the doctor had distinctly invited Mrs. 
Chiltern, the other four would have to bide their time. 

Mrs. Chiltern was gone about an hour. When she 
came back there was a suppressed excitement about her 
which it was impossible not to notice. 

“Will they suit .? ” 

“To perfection ! They are superb.” 

“And you have taken them.?” 

“Subject to Mrs. Mackaye’s approval,” said Mrs. 
Chiltern, her eyes dancing in the most remarkable 
manner. 

‘ ‘ When can we see them .? ” 

“ Not until she comes. The proprietor is rather a 
peculiar man, and seems to object to having the carpets 
trampled over unnecessarily. And I don’t blame him, 
for they are beautiful and delicate in the extreme. Maria, 
the doctor says you are not to stir out of the house 
for the next ten days. My dear girls, now that this 
task has been providentially taken out of our hands, we 
must give our attention to the reception for Jeanne and 
Dolly. Of course, all the Rockwoods and the Fosters 
and the Verplanks must be invited. One of you take 
your pencil and tablet, and the rest of you help me to 
think. ” 


244 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


Three weeks, after all, is a very small slice taken out 
of the year, but it seemed to Dr. Milbank that an un- 
usually long period of time had elasped between that 
morning call of his at Mrs. Chiltern’s and the moment 
when his man announced to him that there were two 
ladies come to look at the suite of rooms upstairs. 

Then for half a second he fell to trembling like a boy 
caught at a naughty trick. But Mrs. Chiltern had ap- 
proved, and Mrs. Chiltern would make it all right. 

He could hear them walking softly about upstairs. 
With a nervous little laugh he flung his head back defi- 
antly, and, leaving his own parlor, sprang lightly up the 
stairs and opened the door to the suite. They had just 
reached the little alcove. Her hand was upon the blue- 
velvet portiere. She drew it back, and then leaned for- 
ward with an audible exclamation. Randall’s master- 
piece was there before her. 

“ I — don’t understand — what is this ?” 

She turned her puzzled face over her shoulder. Where 
Mrs. Chiltern had been standing John Milbank was 
standing, looking down into her face, holding out his 
hands to her, just as he had held them out to her on 
Tea Island, before — he knew. 

“I have been tricked — decoyed. Where am I .? What 
does this mean .? ” She pointed to the statue. 

She could see Mrs. Chiltern ’s form silhouetted against 
the windows of the parlor which she had just been ex- 
pending her lavish encomiums upon. Three long rooms 
were between them. Close at hand stood the only man 
she had ever really and understandingly loved, and he 
was protesting, explaining, pleading, all in a voice of 
such intense earnestness that she thrilled at the sweet- 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


245 

ness of it, and turned her face from him that he might 
not read it too easily. 

“But this?” 

She pointed to the alcove where Love's Young Dream 
stood upon its pedestal. 

“ I could not let it pass into profane hands, my love. 
It has been enshrined there almost as long as you have 
been enshrined in my heart. When I brought it here it 
was with no thought of this moment ever becoming 
possible, Marianne. You believe that, do you not? I 
said to my heart, that no other woman could ever reign 
in it, and the cold marble that reproduced your features, 
my dear, gave me more pleasure than any other woman 
of flesh and blood could do. But now, this is my home, 
Marianne, and I ask vou to enter in as its mistress and 
my wife.” 

She put her hand in his very gently. There was no 
confusion, no awkwardness, no reservations. Each 
knew that he and she had come into their own. 

“Do you think you wdll take the suite, Mrs. Mac- 
kaye ? ” Mrs. Chiltern was no bungler. She had timed 
them accurately. She stood now looking innocently 
into Marianne’s face. 

“ Provided ” 

Dr. Milbank gave eager heed. 

“That there is a room for father. I came back to 
take care of him.” 

“We have thought of that too, haven’t we. Doctor? 
And now that this house business is off my hands, we 
may as well drive home and dress for dinner.” 

“ I am not such a careless householder as you would 


246 


A SPLENDID EGOTIST. 


make me out/’ said John Milbank, with a fleeting smile. 
“It is usual to fix dates for occupation.” 

“Tell him two weeks from to-day, my dear. It is 
your only safeguard. I have known him for thirteen 
years, and I never knew him to yield a point.” 

But Marianne had “views of her own,” and it was 
not until she had told Dr. Milbank every particular of 
that lonely escape from Tea Island, and of her own 
ignorance of the danger she had involved herself and 
him in, that she consented to fix the date for their 
marriage. 


THE END 


BELFORD’S 

MHGHZINE. 

BONN PIATT, Editor. 


Washington, D. C. July 16, 1886'. 

We have examined BELFORDS MAGAZINE; find that in its 
political tone and contents it is distinctly and thoroughly demo- 
cratic; of high literary merit, and we take pleasure in commending 
it to all who want a fair, able and fearless exponent of sound 
principles, combined with the literature of a first-class Magazine. 


A. H. GARLAND, Attorney General. 
JOHN M. BLACK, Com. of Pensions. 
D. W. VOORHKES, U. S. S. 

JAMES B. BECK, U. S. S. 

JOS. C. S. BLACKBURN, U. S. S. 

J. R. MCPHERSON, U. S. S. 

JOHN W. DANIEL, U. S. S 
JOHN H. REAGAN, U. S. S. 

Z. B. VANCE, U. S, S. 

M. C. BUTLER, U. S S. 

JAS. Z. GEORGE, U. S. S. 

WADE HAMPTON, U. S. S. 

C. R. BRECKINRIDGE, M. C. 

W. C. WHITTHORNE, M. C. 
THOMAS WILSON, M. C. 

JOS. WHEELER. M C. 
MELBOURNE H. FORD, M. C. 
GEORGE A. ANDERSON, M. C. 

, THOMAS R. HUDD, M. C. 

BENTON McMILLIN, M. C. 

JAMES PHELAN, M. C. 

JOHN H. ROGERS, M. C 
T. M. NORWOOD, M. C. 

JAMES N. BURNS, M C. 

HENRV GEORGE. 

Bedford’s 


DON M. DICKINSON, P. M. Genl. 

A. E. STEVENSON, Ist Asst. P. M. G. 
ELI S \ULSBURY, U. S. S. 

E. C. WALTHALL, U. S. S. 

W. G. SUMNER, Professor, Yale Col. 
JAMES K. JONES, U. S. S. 

R. Q. MILLS, M. C. 

JAMES H. BERRY, U. S. S. 

JAMES L. PUGH, U. S. S. 

H B, PAYNE, U. S. S. 

C. C. MATSON, M. C. 

R. W. TOWNSHEND, M. C. 

J. H. OUTH WAITE, M. C. 

H. H, CARLTON, M. C 

J. C. CLEMENS, M. C. 

B. F. SHIVELY, M. C. 

Wm. C. OATES, M. C. 

W. J. STONE, M. C. 

P. T GLASS, M. C. 

C. T. O’PERRALL, M. C. 

P. T. SHAW, M. C. 

J R. whiting, M. C. 

S. Z. LANDES, M. C. . 

ALEX. M. DOCKERY. M. C. 

T. C. McRAE, M. C. 

JOHN E. HUTTON, M. C. 

H W. RUSK, M. C. 

THOMAS E. POWELL 


Monthly is a first-class medium for advertising, 


as the publishers guarantee a hona-Jide circulation of at least 70,000 
copies per month. 

• Prices, $2.50 a year, or 25 cents per number. 

BELFORD. CURKE & CO.. Publishers 

CHICAGO. NlilF YORK. SAN FRANCISCO. 


BELFORD’S MAGAZINE 

BONN PIATT, Editor. 

A COMPLETE COPYRIGHT NOVEL IN EACH NUMBER. 


More than two thousand newspapers have reviewed and com- 
mented favorably on the Magazine among them the following: 

“ Altogether the Magazine is full both of interest and promise.” — Chicago 
Herald. 

“ If the Magazine contained nothing be -ides the 100 pages of Elizabeth W Bel- 
lamy s novel, ‘Old Man Gilbert,’ it would be worth more than its price. The story 
is of Florida life, and, in action, interest, humor, dialect, and portrayal of negro 
and Southern types, it deserves the highest rank among literary productions of the 
New South.” — Chicago Tribune. 

“ Altogether the monthly seems likely to win very wide reading, and to deserve 
it quite as much as some more pretentious elder sisters.” — Chicago Times 

‘‘It i^ really a first'Class publicition both in matter and appearance.” — Chicago 
Journal. 

“ Belpord’s Magazine offers in its first number * * * a long story or novel- 
ette by a Southern writer, Mrs. Bellamy. This story is really above the average of 
magazine fiction, and it is far from needing the flattering letter with which the 
author of St. Eljao introduces it.”— iV. T. Tribune. 

‘‘Belpord’s Magazine has been wise enough to select the keenest and most 
slashing writer at its command. Col. Bonn Piatt, to edit it and to contribute to its 
pages. * * * Such Republican contributors as Coates Kinney, one of who.-e 
stiiring lyrics is wotth tbe price of an entire volume.” — SjfyringJleld Begister. 

‘‘American magazine literature has been substantially enriched by the opening 
number of Belfoid’s new magazine.” — N. Y. Standard. 

‘‘ The articles on tariff reform and wool are worth the close attention of i very 
thinkiug man in the land.” — Chattanooga News. 

‘‘This magazine will certainly grow rapidly, in public Richmond 

Times. 

‘‘ It is unique in containing more reading than advertising matter, a feature that 
some of its older contemporaries might emulate to their obvious advant ge ai.d 
improvement.” — Burlington Hawkeye, 

“It will attract attention by its strength and vigor, and independent treatment 
of the foremo'st political iOTgice,."— Syracuse (N. Y.) Herald. 

“The number before us gves unmistakable evidence that this new aspirant for 
public honors is to be essentially and distinctively American, unfettere i by pre- 
judice, and one whose contents will be educative and intensely in cresting, not 
only to th who cursorily glance over current monthlies, but to those who, read- 
ing from cover to cover, desire a magazine whose every article shall be thoroughly 
readable from a popular standpoint.” — The Progressive Te icher. 

Belpord’s Monthly is a first-class medium for advertising, as the publishers 
guarantee a bona-fide circul- tion of at least 70,000 copies per month. 

Pi ice, $2 50 a year, or 25 cents per number. 


BUFORD, CLARKE & CO.. Publishers. 


ChicagOt ^ew Yorh, and San Francisco. 


BOOKS MOST TALKED ABOUT. 


EDEN. 


By Edoar Saltus, author of “ The Trutli about Tristrem Variok,” etc. 
Cloth, $1.00. Paper, 50 cents. 


In this novel Mr, Saltns describes an episode in a honeymoon. 
^ -n nervous, and the scene Fifth Avenue. As a picture of 

will be condemned by every lover of the commonplace. 


The plot is dramatic, 
contemporaneous life it 


A THE mh CENTURY^" 

EROS. 

A Novel. By Laura Daintrey, author of “ Misj Varian, of New York.” 
12mo. Cloth, $1.00. Paper, 50 cents. Strong, interesting, and 
delightful. 


MARIE. 

A Seaside Episode. By J. P. Ritter, Jr. With Illustrations by Coultaus. 

Cloth, $1.00. Paper covers, 50 cents. 

In this poem, the author tell? an interesting love story in an exceedingly bright, 
clever, and amusing fashion, that reminds one a good deal of Byron’s “ B ppo. ’ Inciden- 
tally, he satirizes society in a light vein of humor, and in a style that i« graceful and epi- 
grammatic. The volume contains over forty illustrations, and is an admirable specimen of 
the bookmaker’s art. 


A NEW AND EXTRAORDINARY STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE. 

THE ROMANCE OF A QUIET WATERINO PLACE. 

Being the unpremeditated Confessions of a not altogether frivolous girl (ex- 
tracted from the private correspondence of Miss Evelyn J. Dwyer). By 
Nora Helen Warddel. 12mo. Cloth, $1.00. Paper covers, 50 cents. 
Thirty beautiful Illustrations by Graves. 

“ The story is very readable.”— AT. Y. Sun. 

“Cleverly conceived and as cleverly told, and has a dash of French flavor in it.” — 
Hartford Courant. 

” \’o American novel has been so beautifully illustrated. • • * An original work, 
bracing and piquant as Worcestershire sauce or a bottle of thirty years old sherry .” — Tfie 
Argus^ Dattirmre. 

BELFORD, CLARKE A CO., Publishers, 

‘CHICAGO, NEW YORK, and SAN FRANCISCO. 


BOOKS 3S/10ST FtE-A-ID 


HIS WAT AND HER WILL. 

A pen-and-ink miniature of Eastern society. By A. X. 12mo. Cloth, 
^1.00. Paper covers, 50 cents. 

“A remarkably clever book.” — The American Bookseller. 

” I )iie of the iright'ist of this seasou’s novels.” — Ea?i End Bulletin. 

“ Better than the average ” — N. Y. Sun. 

“ It is worth reading.”— .5a^</mor« Argus. 

KISSES OP PATE. 

By E. Heron-Allen. 12tno. Cloth, $1.00. Paper cover-', 50 cents. 

Three hundred pages of as delightful reading as we have ever published. Julian Haw- 
thorne compliments Mr. Aden as being the ablest of the many young writers competing 
for American readers’ favor 

A SLAVE OP CIRCUMSTANCES. 

By E De L.-t.NCEY Pierson. Cioth, $1.00. Paper covers, 50 cents. 

‘•Isa new and high-w ought society novel that will be in good demand for summer 
r- adl ng.” — Boston Commonwealth 

“ The book is as novel in conception and plot as it is clever in execution ; and will be a 
valu.il)le adjunct to a sp ire aftenioou at the beach.” — Daily Spray ^ Ashbury Park. 

' A clever story.” — Buffalo hxpress. 

THE LONE GRAVE OP THE SHENANDOAH. 

By Donn Piatt. 12rno. Cloth, $1.00. Paper, 50 cents. 

I onn Piatt never wrote an uninteresting line in his long life. This book contains his 
best stories ; • ac i one shows the character of the author — that of a true, loving, and lovable 
man Any man with such a vast and varied experience as that of Col. Piatt could have 
written wonderfully interesting stories, but It takes genius and born ability t6 write tales 
as delightful as these. 

A DREAM AND A FORGETTING. 

By Julian Hawthorne. 12ino. Cloth, $1.00. Paper covers, 50 cents. 

” ‘ A Dream and a Forgetting ’ will put the author on a higher plane than he has yet 
attained.”— (Saii Francisco Chronicle. 

” Mr Hawthorne is to be congratulated on having taken a decided step forward in his 
chosen profession.”— -CAicayo Herald. 

TOM BURTON. 

A Story of the clays of ’61 By N. J. W. Le Cato, author of “ Aunt Sally’s 
Boy Jack.” 12ino. Cloth, $1.00. Paper covers, 50 cents. 

“Told in a pleasing way.” — American. Baltimore. 

” The book is full of stirring incidents, and the occasional bits of natural humor add 
charms to an interesting and lively "—Jeweller's Weekly. N. Y. 

•• It will surely interest both young and old.^'-^Times, Boston. 

A NOVEL WITH A PLOT: 

TflE TRUTH ABOUT TRISTREM VARIOK. 

By Edgar Saltus, author of “ Mr. Incoul’s Misadventure,” etc. ' 12mo. 
Cloth, $1.00. Paper, 50 cents. 

In this novel Mr. Saltus h's treated a subject hitherto unexoloited in fiction. The 
scene is Fifth Aveiiu , theaciion emotional, the plot a surprise. “ There is,” some one 
said, “as much mu l in the upper classes as in the lower ; only, in the firmer it is gilded.” 
This aphori m might serve as epigraph to Tribtrem Varick. 

BELFORD, CLARKE S CO., FaUlshers, 

CIIICAQO, NEW YORK, AND SAN FRANiTSCO. 


B0035LS. 


THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 

By Phillips Thompson. 1 vol., 13ino. Cloth, $1.25, 

“ This book will mark an epoch in American thought. It is fully up with the times. 
* * ♦ It is the prophet of the New Era.”— .B. /. 

“ One of the most valuable works drawn out by current discussions on social and econ- 
omical questions, and one that is sure to take a high place in the permanent and standard 
hteraiure of the Opinion, RocMand. 

“ This book is enlightening and inspiring; every thoughtful man and woman should 
lead it.” — Tribune, Junction City. 

“ Mr. Thompson presents the whole question of land and labor reform as clearly as 
could be desried. ”—ifaW, Chicago. 

BANCROFT’S HISTORY OP THE COLONIZATION 
OP THE UNITED STATES. 

By George Bancroft. Two vols in one. 12mo. Illustrated. Cloth, $1.50. 

“ Since Ranke’s death George Bancroft is the greatest living historian. The American 
citizen who has not read his history of the United States is a poor patriot, or an unfortu- 
nately ignorant person. We fear there are too many of them, as there are of those who 
have never even read the constitution of their country. It is not too late for these delin- 
quents to buy a copy of this great book, and learn something that will be of interest and 
profit the remainder of their lives.” — Churchman. 

THE STORY OP MANON LESCAUT. 

From the French of L’A.bbe Prevost. A new translation, by Arthur W. 
Gundry, from the French edition of 1753, with over 200 full-page and 
other illustrations by the great French artist, Maurice Leloir, and others. 
Reproduced by photogravure, wood-engraving, and photo-engraving 
processes from the superb edition de luxe, published in Paris in 1885. 
4to. Cloth, extra gold and red, in a neat box, $3.00. [M. B. — The price 
of the French edition, with same engravings, is $20.] 

PAINTERS OP THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE. 

By Edith Healy. Illustrated by 25 original copperplate engravings of 
choice masterpieces of the leading Italian painters, executed in the high- 
est style of art by the famous French engraver, M. De Mare. Small 4to. 
Richly bound, extra cloth, gold title and ornamentation, $5.00. Full 
morocco, $4.00. Cloth, school edition, $1.25. 

WASHINGTON IRVING’S 

LIFE OP GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

3 vols., 12mo., cloth, $4.50 ; 3 vols., 12mo., half morocco, $9.00; 3 vols., 
12mo., half calf, $9.00. 

To speak at this lat" day in praise of Irving’s “ Life of Washington ” would be like 
painting marble or gilding refined gold. No American library, public or private, is com- 
plete without this work. This is a new edition, printed from new plates, at a very mode- 
rate price. _ ^ 

LES MISERABLES. 

By Victor Hugo. 1 vol., large 12mo., $1 50 ; the same on heavy paper in 3 
vols., 12mo., cloth, $4.50; 3 vols., 12rao., half morocco, $9.00 ; 3 vols., 
12mo., half calf, $9.00. Illustrated. 

“Les Miserables ” is universally admitted to be the great masterpiece of Victor Hugo, 
that brightest literary light of modern Prance. This book, once carefu ly read will never 
be forgotten. The study of it is an education. 

JiELFORD, CLARKE tP CO., Publishers, 

CHICAGO, NEW YORK, AND SAN FRANCISCO. 


2>ar3E:x\r books 


MEMORIES OF THE MEN WHO SAVED THE UNION, 

Lincoln, Stanton, Chase, Seward, Gen. Thomas, etc., with new portraits. 

By Bonn Piatt. 12mo., Cloth, gilt top, illustrated, $1.60. Paper covers, 
25 cents. 

“This is one of the ablest books on the war, and will create a sensation.” — Times. 
“Very few men had the opportunity of knowing the inside history of the war as well 
a.i Mr. Piatt .” — Courier y New Haven. 

“ Every word of the volume is thoroughly readable, and no one who begins it will lay 
it aside without going to the end .” — The Americariy Baltimore. 

ANTI-POVERTY AND PROGRESS. 

By Sister Frances M. Clare, the Nun of Kenmare. 1 vol., 12mo. Paper 
covers, 50 cents. 

“ The good sister alternately deals effective blows against Mr. George’s impracticabili- 
ties and urges upon the rich, alike ecclesiastical as lay, the inauguration of true anti-poverty 
from the top of society. ♦ * * The author evidently thinks religion more of a remedy 

for poverty than science.”— Eagle. 

THE TRUTH ABOUT ALCOHOL. 

By Robert Alexander Gunn, M.D. Square 32mo. Cloth, 40 cents. 

“ There is much common sense in ‘ Th3 Truth About Alcohol.’ The author is a well- 
known New York physician, who has made a specialty of the subject of stimulants. He 
demonstrates by conclusive evidence that spirits are of great value in many cases, and that 
the temperance advocates wilfully pervtrt the t uth Increasing age brings with it less 
capacity for enduring mental strain and worry, and spirits act as a recuperative influence. 
The same is true in regard to t iking of wine or liquors by braln-worl^rs with their meals. 
Digestion is aided, and the lassitude so frequently experienced is removed. The little book 
demands a wide circulation, as it contains information vouched for by the best medical 
authorities, both here and abroad, which is of great practical value.”-— .Sari Francisco 
Chronicle. 

ROBERT ELSMERE. 

By Mrs. Humphrey Ward, author of “ Miss Bretherton,” etc. 12mo. Cloth. 
Price, $1.25. 

“ The book is a drama in which every page is palpitating with intense and real life . It 
is a realistic novel in the highest sense of the word .” — Whitehall Review. 

“ Comparable in sheer intellectual power to the best works of George Eliot. 
Uimuestionably one of the most notable works of fiction that has been produced in years.” 
—The Scotsman. 

THE PRINCESS DAPHNE. 

12mo. Cloth, $1.00. In Paper covers, illustrated by a remarkable and 
unique drawing by B. Hamilton Bell, 50 cents. 

The heroine of this thrilling story is a Creole descended from two of the original 
settlers of New Orleans. The story deals with phases of Bohemian life in New York and 
London; with love, mesmerism, death, transmigration, and reincarnation. It is told in an 
undisguised realistic fashion that reminds one of Daudet’s “ Sapho,” and it has a most 
startling denouement. 


For sale everywhere, or may be had of the Publishers on receipt of price, 
free of postage , 

BELFORD, CLARKE & CO., 

CHICAGO, NEW YORK, and SAN FRANCI^sCO. 


KTE'W BOOKS. 


IT IS THE LAW. 

A Story of Marriage and Divorce. By Thomas Edgar Willson. 12mo. 
Cloth, $1,00. Paper covers, 50 cents. 

“ The book is written with much force and the subject is presented in a fearless way ” 
— Democrat, Keokuk. 

“ One of the most curious books that has appeared for many a day.”— C'Aron.icfe, San 
Francisco 

” The book is not suited to general reading.”— Journal, Belfast. 

“ The book can only be appreciated by being read, and while somewhat flashy, is not a 
very exaggerated expose of the matrimonial law as now observed.” — Columbia Law Times. 

“ The book professes to show and prove that in New York a man can have as many 
wives as he chooses to support,” &c. — Womans Journal, Boston. 

WOMAN THE STRONGER. 

A Novel. By Wm. J. Flagg. 12tno. Cloth, $1.00. Paper covers, 50 cents. 
” Full of clever writing ; up to the average novel.” — The Globe. 

The editor of t^Belford's says: “ It is far superior to many of the so-called novels of th 
day.” 


MISS VARIAN OP NEW YORK. 

By Laura Daintrey, author of “ Bros.” 12aio. Cloth, $1.00. Paper 50 
cents. 

This is the Fifteenth Edition of “Miss Varian,” a fact which speaks more forcibly 
than words for its worth and interest to the novel-reading world. 

By the Author of “POEMS OP PASSION.” 

“ MAURINE,” and other Poems. 

By Ella Wheeler Wilcox. With Photogravure Portrait of the Author. 
12;no. Cloth. Price $1.00. 

“ Poems of Passion ” sells faster than any other book of poems published. “ Maurine” 
is by the same hand and brain. The poems are as good and beautiful as those in her other 
popular work. 

STAR DUST. 

A Collection of Poems. By Fannie Isabel Sherrick. 12mo. Cloth, gilt 

$ 1 . 00 . 

“These Poems show great originality and an imagery which is both forcible and 
delicate.” — Si. Louis Republican. , , 

“ A gifted writer, and many of her metrically expressed thoughts will have an enduring 
place in American Literature.” — Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

RENTS IN OUR ROBES. 

By Mrs. Prank Leslie. 12mo. Cloth, $1.00. Paper covers, 60e. 

A brillant review of modern society and manners, by one of their most noted ex- 
ponents, Sparkling sketches and essays of modern life, invested with all the charm of 
wit, raillery, sentiment, and spontnneity which a cultured woman of the world might be 
expected to bestow uiion such a subject. “ Ren s in Our Robes ’’is a book that helps no less 
tbEn it entertains ; and perhaps no better idea of its charm can be conveyed, than in say* 
ing that the author has put a great deal of herself into the work. , 

BELFOBD, CLARKE S CO., Publishers, 

CHICAGO, NEW YORK AND SAN FRANCISCO. 


lO'JES'V^ 3300IS.S 


OFF THOUGHTS ABOUT LOVE, WOMEN, AND 

OTHER THINGS. 

By Samuel Rockwell Reed, of the Cincinnati Commercial-OazeUe. ] 2mo. 
Cloth, $1.00. Paper, 60 cents. 

The following are some of t'le subjects discussed in this valuable I?ook of Essays, 
by one of the best writers in th^ country: ‘’Love and Marriage,” “The Paby and 
the Ballot,” “ Scientific— Spots on Domestic Animals,” “ The Married Man’s Liabili- 
ties,” “ The Women’s Movement,” “How and When to Die,’ “Was the Creation a 
Failure?” “ Trial by Jury a Defeat of Justice,” “Pishing and Morals,” “ 1 he Converted 
Frize-Pighter,” 

THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 

Its Foundations Contrasted with its Superstructure. By Wm. Rathbone 
Greg, author of “ Bnig^mas of Life,” “Literary and SocialJudgments,’’ 
etc. 13mo. Cloth, $1.35. 

SOCIALISM AND UTILITARIANISM. 

By John Stuart Mill, author of “ Principles of Political Economy,”- “ A 
System (f Logic,” etc., etc. 13mo. Cloth, $1.25. 

FORTY YEARS ON THE RAIL. 

Reminiscences of a Veteran Conductor. By Charles B. George. Illus- 
trated. 13mo. Cloth, $1.00. Paper covers, 50c. 

“No railroad man in the West has had more active or eventful experiences in 
train Wte."— Chicago Evening Jo^irnal. 

“ A very interesting book.” — Wisconsin. 

“ He tells it all in a vtry chatty, agreeable style.” — Official Railway Guide. 

POLITICAL ORATORY OP EMERY A. STORRS, 

From Lin.oln to Garfielil. By IsaaoB. Adams. 12ino. Cloth, pilt top, $1.25. 

These orations cover twenty of the most eventful years of the nation’s life, and are 
jjot only valuable for their matchless eloquence, but as a rich contribution to American 
mstory. They show the speaker to have had a masterly grasp of every subject he und»T- 
took to discuss. Every oration is rich in pointed illustration, full of important declaration 
of political principles^ and sparkling t'-ironghoiit with genuine wit. In will be found to be 
an invaluable aid to those who are called upon to deliver political addresses. Indeed, no 
one can be thoroneliiy posted on the stirring political events of the last twenty years with- 
out reading Mr. Storr’s orations. 

POEMS OP PASSION. 

By Ella Wheeler, author of “ Maurine” and other poems. (27th edition.) 
The most salable Book of Poems published this century. Small 13mo. 
Red Cloth, $1.00. 

No book during the last t..n years has created so genuine a sensation as “Poems of 
Passion.” It required no common courage to write so boldly and so plainly of the great 
passion of love. A part from these distinctive poems, the vciume is rich in exquisite strains 
that will insure Ella Wheeler a pormaucut place among American poets. 

THE CONFESSIONS OP A SOCIETY MAN. 

By Blanche Conscience. 12 uo. Cloth, $1.25. Illustrated. 

“ The Confessions of a Socie'y Man” can hardly be called a book for young girls, 
though the publishers' prospectus declares it to be free of one immoral word. Also D 
difficult to determine whether it is the work of a man or of a woman. Rumor has it that 
the author is a young lawyer, very prominent in the society of ITiiladelphia; at least, the 
scene is laid there at first, and later on vibrates between the Quaker City, Nev.' York, 
and the fashionable summer resorts. Whoever the author is he abandons generalizations 
and confines himself strictly to facts. He goes into details with a calm composure wh’ch 
pimply takes away one’s breath. . . . Born to good social position, wealthy, educitfd 

partially in Europe, good-looking, well-dres-sed, wibl-msmiered, and utterly given over 
to frivolities, he is the familiar typo of the reckless man of society.”— Aew YorTc World. 

BELFOBD, CLARKE cO CO,, FiiblisJiers, 

CHICAGO, NEW YORK. AND SAN FRANCISCO. 


TARIFF BOOKS, 




The Tariff on Imports into the United States, 

and the Free List, 

As contained in Act of March 3, J883 ; als'', The Hawaiian Reciprocity Treaty, and Extracts 
from the Navigation and Oleomargarine Acts. Indexed. I2mo, Paper covers, 25 cents. 

A most useful book. In a moment you can fi d the exact tax on any article imported 
into the United States, and the names of everything on the free li^t. Invaluable to editors 
and all interested in the great tariff question now so freely discussed. 


An Appeal to the American People as a Jury. 

SPEECHES ON THE TARIFF, 

Delivered in the House of Represen' atives in the great debate, April 17-May 19, 1888. 

SPECIAI.I4Y SELECTED FKOITI BOTH SIDES. 


Carefully Revised and Published by Authority. Compiled by WILLIAM G. TERRELL. 
Large 12mo., Clo'h, $1.00 ; Paper, 50 cents. 

The following is a list of the names of the Hon. Gentlemen whose speeches are printed 
in the work. 


Hon. Mr. Mills, of Texas. 

“ Kelley, of Pennsylvania. 
“ Scott, “ 

“ Wilson, of West Virginia. 

“ McKinley, of Ohio. 


Hon. Mr. Carlisle, of Kentucky. 


Hon. Mr. McMillin, of Tennessee. 
“ Butteuworth, of Ohio. 
‘‘ Cox, of New York. 

“ Burrows, of Michigan. 

Reed, of Maine. 


Special editions of not less than 2000 copies for campaign purposes made at greatly 
reduced prices. If required, all the Republican speeches can be had in a separate volume, 
or all the Democratic ones likewise. 


The Protective Tariff: What it does for us. 

BY GENERAL HERMANN LIEB. 

Fourth Edition, with Revisions and Additions. 12mo. Cloth. $1.00. 


THE PRESS UNANIMOUS IN ITS PRAISE. 

This book shows the practical effect of the Protective System upon the country. Per- 
haps the most conspicuous feature of tue book is its exact alignment with the me-<8age of 
President Cleveland. But for the fact that the General’s work was in print before the 
message was made rublic, it might be supposed he had written it to defend the President’s 
position on the Tariff. 

The position of Mr. Blaine’s “Twenty Years in Congress ” is taken up, his assertions 
upon the Tariff are analyzed, criticised, and made to furnish iheir own refutation. 

The arrangement of the subject is in a most convenient form, a'^d renders what is usually 
considered a most abstruse subject easy of comprelieruion. It would serve as a Tariff 
primer for the learner as well as a text book for i h 2 h arned. 

For sale everywhere, or maybe had of the Publishers on receipt of price, 
free of postage. 

BELFORI), CLARKE CO.. Publishers, 

CHICAGO, NEvV YORE, AND SAN FTANCI^^CO. 


JUVENILES. 


ONE SYLLABLE HISTORIES OF THE STATES. 

Histories of the States in Words of One Syllable. 
SPECIALLY DESIGNED FOR THE YOUNG. 


A HISTOKY OF NEW ENGLAND 

In Words of One Syllable. By Mrs. H. N. Cady. Richly Illustrated. Illu- 
minated Board Cover. Boards, $1.00. Cloth, $1.50. 

A HISTORY OF NEW YORK 

In Words of One Syllable. By Mrs. J. H. Walwohth. Richly Illustrated. 
Illuminated Board Cover. Boards, $1.00. Cloth, $1.50. 

A HISTORY OP ILLINOIS 

In Words of One Syllable. By Thos. W. Handford. Richly Illustrated, 
Illuminated Board Cover. Boards, $1.00. Cloth, $1.50. 

A HISTORY OHIO 

In Words of One Syllable. By Mrs. H. N. Cady. Richly Illustrated. Illu- 
minated Board Cover. Boards, $1.00. Cloth, $1.50. 


WHAT JESUS SAID. 

The Words of the Lord Jesus, Expounded, Classified, and Arranged in Con- 
venient Positions Suitable for Committal to Memory. A Book Specially 
for the Little Ones. By Thomas W. Handford. With 20 Illustrations 
from Drawings by Gustave Dore. Illuminated Board Cover, 50 cents.- 

POETRY AND PICTURES. 

Poems and Legends from the Old World and the New. For the Boys and 
Girls of America. Edited by Thomas W. Handford. Beautifully Illus- 
trated. Illuminated Board Cover. Price, 50 cents. 


ANIMALS AND BIRDS. 

Stories and Studies Concerning the Habits of Animals and Birds, Profusely 
Illustrated, Edited by Thomas W. Handford. Illuminated Board 
Cover. Price, 50 cents. 


CHRISTMAS DAY. 

Stories, Legends, and Poems of the Merry Christmas Tide. Christmas Games 
and Readings suitable for Christmas Festivities. Book for the Young. 
By Thomas W. Handford. Fully Illustrated. Illuminated Board 
Cover. Price, 50 cents. 


BELFORD, CLARKE & CO., 


CHICAGO, NEW YORK, and SAN FRANCISCO. 

u I 5 

■■ , 



M \ 


3 

I 


•I 


.4 







^ ^ - ^11 

> v-«^/ '^’^' ■^' \ 


V -V 

o C) 

O' ,0 N 0 ■’ ^ ^ 

\ ^ ^ 0 ^ s ' ’ / 



•* T> •- 

cV '/"- 

j t, t, s'' y 
VM)^ A^ 

* .0 ^ 

^ ^yv/ni^ " ^ ^ri 

ty ^vSv//^^ "v 

^ C^ y 

•y g , \ * ^0 <y 


* .‘b '/>„ 

4 l^ » 

^ >■ -WW' > 

0 « X ^ ^ <■ i, i, s'' y < 'oox 

. '^o V^ 




: ‘V., 

*,.o’* /‘ "‘°-/-'*.i'"V s.., V*^’* y 

v^ i\ ^ «> 



\> ^ ^ ‘ « 



a'b <^n ^ 

. S *J*^ 

V 'Kj "* 

L.'^ ry y 

''J s ■ % ' 

, 0 N c ^ ^ ^ ‘ ^ ^ S ’ ' ' " 





. 0 ' t ^ . o. 


^ 8 

> 

1 

C' 




■to 'V V' 




^o. ‘•,7 ,.' .O' 

' o^ s ^ ^ > 

VM=>'/ ■' ' 

Ti'' 

^ 0 ^ X *^\0 O, .-A 





^ o'^ ® 

=> >■ ^ 






V? 

O > 



A ^ ^ r, 

^ W%. . 



\L> 

0 ^ X 


o 

''^I^ '' '~7<, A , ^V 

-, -- rO*' ^ ' '“ -f ^ a'^ ' cA c 0 


^ ^ 0 ^ 

*^ = •; o 



A 

^ 0 ■> 

" \ o^ 

0^ 

s ?5 - 

Y . 0 , ^ 

v^ .C V (Vv\ //h o 

*' * \ ^ CAA^Sr//.h ^ ^ 

° 

■- . 0 X^ y'^ \ 0 ^- o ^ 

' .0' C«^^> ^b_ '■^^\‘^\\<.v'«, 

0 * ^ ..V^ -1 

. . ^ aN a ^^({f 7 ^ ^ ~ 

o' I 
’ ® c^ 


\V ^ f ^ a t \ 

A^ . ^ 

V 

^ S 



o 


^ ’ I i, O s''^ A ^ ^ 

^O o ^ ' « -fr < 3 i 

- aV 






0 ^ o N C %A'a^A A , 

0 ®' 

. < cSSOvxVh'*^ 

* *>^ * ^ 

, o > * 

?V^ * 


^-e<^ ✓ 







